[Thomas]

Yeah, I don’t mean to say that life under the Legion is ‘fascism light’, since it clearly isn’t. I suppose I was trying to capture that the Legion is ejected from a borough through politics, not force, and that people can leave Legion boroughs without getting shot at the Berlin Wall.

Real world analogues are never going to be perfect, but the take-away I have, generally, is that the Legion is an oppressive political regime, not a conquering military.

[Thomas]

I think Matthew is right to shift the conversation to what to do with captured lieutenants.

I think much of the time, execution is going to make sense. As a community, we should try to acknowledge that the player of the lieutenant has put time and effort into making story for folks, and that unlike, say, a monster guest or high-tier PC antagonist, they haven’t gotten karma/RPXP/etc for doing so — but all the same, villains’ stories have an ending. We should just try to make sure we do that with some acknowledgement and closure.

Long-term imprisonment just doesn’t make sense, and I think brainwashing is codedly not possible.

I think there are some circumstances where we might release a lieutenant in order to gain some advantage, if they seem ICly like someone you can make a deal with. For example, one faction to try to lean on the lieutenant to use their powers to help in a fight against another faction. Another example may be letting a lieutenant go to get a ‘free pass’ in a borough you need to spend some time on.

Ultimately, though, these ‘bargain’ circumstances are going to be very limited to the particular IC events at the time. There may be some other circumstances, for instance in an RP fight, where the lieutenant flees — and perhaps roughup makes a little sense for that even in coded combat, if the war hasn’t been very “hot” lately.

Still, a lot of the time death is going to be the outcome that makes sense under the story. I think what’s incumbent on us as a community is to try to make that meaningful, -especially- because lieutenant guests are pure labors of love, without any sort of reward for the RP work that is put into creating them.

[Thomas]

So, to those four questions:

1. (Do Lieutenants have an obvious reason to kill them?) Monsters do, and it’s made explicit. Lieutenants don’t. They may — seems like a good subject for an ATS.

2. (Content Creation) I don’t think the ‘if you kill LTs they are just going to kill you’ is a very legitimate argument, I agree. But LTs get an ‘I win’ button in the form of control incapacitate, so if the result of engaging in coded combat where PCs have a chance to win is that they get killed with no RP, I don’t think PCs will be given a chance to win. I agree the bar for extreme action is lower, but ‘not RPing’ isn’t extreme action. It’s an OOC, not an IC decision.

3. Yes, as the regular player of antagonist, I do so to create RP. When I play an antagonist I know they will get theirs — indeed, my Big Antagonist in H6 is one of the only people to have gotten killed. If the story makes sense for my character to die, great. Doing so without getting any RP would strike me as extremely disrespectful.

4. I don’t think there is a relationship between LT guests and raid LTs, but perhaps an ATS is neccessary. That’s not how I read the help file.

In a broad sense, it strikes me as problematic to ‘guess’ that someone else doesn’t want RP and instead wants to be killed. Let’s imagine that’s the case — the player of the LT is done and wants no RP. What is harmed by waking them up and having them say “I won’t say anything, kill me now!” or be stoically unresponsive? On the other hand, if they do want RP, killing them without waking them -does- harm that interest.

It seems to me like there’s no circumstance where the better choice is to execute. If the LT player wants no RP, you can wake them, they can mouth off a sentence of ‘kill me now’, and you execute. If they want RP, you can wake them, then RP. In both cases, it works out for all the players involved. If you don’t wake, then great, it works out if the LT player wanted no RP, but if they did want RP, there’s a risk of ruining someone’s experience. Given that, why does it make OOC sense to not wake?

[Thomas]

I want to drill into this, too:

“If you encounter 63rd LT is their purpose on grid to be an antagonist and killed?”

It’s quite clear that the purpose of T3s+ is to be an antagonist. The game systems make non-antagonistic RP difficult, and the files are more explicit about T3s being antagonists than LTs, even. Is the sense of the community that they should be killed without any RP?

[Thomas]

I’m very confused, since I’m hearing two things here:

1.) There was a mist monster that put everyone into combat.
2.) The LT guest initiated combat.

These seem to me like really different scenarios.

However, assuming that the LT guest initiated combat, which is to say either their player is not being forthright or there was some confusion — I’m not sure how that justifies a no-RP kill as good RP manners even in the ‘worst case’ scenarios. Attacking people to render them helpless and antag them has been one of the primary ways to engage in antagonism on the game, and what we have been told about LT guests on both Ask the Staff and in the help file is that they are supposed to stir up antagonism.

Is the argument that the LT guest shouldn’t have initiated combat, and should have instead used control incapacitate, where there is no way for their opponents to escape antag? Is the argument that that LT guests aren’t worth RP at all?

I agree that at the end of the day, after some antag and RP, executing a LT guest may make sense when executing a PC member of an evil faction may not, if only because there’s (presumably) not a political capital cost. But is it your position that say, executing an I10 person without RP is okay? That executing a fleshformed character is okay?

Is there a file somewhere that says that the IC reality is that all LT guests are supposed to be hunted and killed? They don’t have their location broadcast like monsters, so something -seems- different about that in terms of code — though like Evalina, I think it’s pretty poor form to kill a monster guest without RP, too.

We’re discussing OOC etiquette, so what do you think the end game should be? Should it be that people not make monster or LT guests? Is it that they should be more aggressive, and only engage in coded aggresson without RP? What should we be incentivizing people to do, OOCly, with their LT guests?

[Thomas]

Fatecrafting (via brainwash) can’t permanently remove a memory, as it can be reversed. The only permanent memory removal tool is hypnotize amnesia. It doesn’t leave any coded legacy to reverse later.

[Thomas]

—
Area: Announcements – Note #774
From: Nova
To: all
Cc:
Subj: Systems Nominal
Time: Thu Sep 25 07:38:51 2025

—
The instability we were experiencing over the last week or so should be resolved. Basically every time the game needs to compare a colored string to a non-colored string it has to create a new non-colored version of that string for comparison. The memory from these weren’t being released properly causing the game to use up more and more memory over time until it froze everything up. It took a while to solve because there were three different ways it was leaking memory, one was pretty obvious and easy to fix, one was quite complicated and took a while to find, and the third required me to learn a bunch of new stuff about C memory handling.

I’ve also made it so the game will auto reboot if it hits a high memory usage just in case.

I put in a change a while ago that would de-color any time which wasn’t expensive enough to be a colored item, I’ve updated the logic now so it de-colors any item which isn’t manually colored and isn’t currently available in a shop at the eligible price. Because I wasn’t previously tracking manually colored items there’s some backfill logic which may be imperfect where if you have an illegible item but also less recolors that you could have based on your community credit it will flag it as if it was manually recolored up to a limit. If you’ve had items you’ve manually recolored de-colored and want your recolors reimbursed please petition.

Manually recolored items should now also not cost a color to change as long as the change is only a few characters.

—

Area: Announcements – Note #789
From: Nova
To: all
Cc:
Subj: Queries, remote content warnings, faenapping
Time: Sat Sep 27 12:15:20 2025

—
You can now use the ‘query’ command in dreamworld scenarios to ask yes/no questions for example ‘Is the door locked’ in order to establish facts of the scenario.

If you finger someone you’ve RP’d with you’ll see the content warnings that currently apply to the two of you.

You can type ‘faenap me please’ to ensure you will be taken by the next visit of the wild hunt.

[Thomas]

Are we talking about real T4s or Lieutenant guests? In H6, guests did not feed, so I don’t know if they raise Invitation or not.

[Thomas]

I play a T3, and I didn’t observe any dramatic Invitation spikes in people I play with until this week. This week, people are going up by 1 or 2 points of Invitation every scene.

I don’t know what, if anything, has changed. I suspect that this is a system driven by the LLM in the background, and I’ve noticed before that the LLM gets ‘stuck’ on ideas, like when every patrol event was a ‘temporal rift’. I don’t know if that’s what is happening here, but it’s not super workable for story.

[Thomas]

—
Area: Announcements – Note #553
From: Nova
To: all
Cc:
Subj: Raid pauses and profile pictures
Time: Wed Aug 6 13:10:54 2025

—
I’ve made an update to raids, they will now go faster generally at speed 2. But every three minutes they will pause for three minutes allowing people to RP etc in the pauses.

When setting up a myhaven profile there are new fields for setting pictures etc for use in your character’s web page. This is still in development but it would be helpful if one or two people set them anyway so I can use them for testing.

—
Area: Announcements – Note #557
From: Nova
To: all
Cc:
Subj: NPC abilities/Character Pages
Time: Thu Aug 7 10:49:31 2025

—
SR created NPCs with abilities should now correctly use those abilities.

Character pages should now be active on the website and synced with MyHaven profiles.

[Thomas]

Related to this (and based on a conversation on OOC):

4.) Would you prefer short, single-paragraph bullet point storyideas that just cover the main thrust? Or would you prefer longer, multi-paragraph storyideas with fulsome detail? What is the ideal length/format of a storyidea?

[Thomas]

—
Area: Announcements – Note #384
From: Nova
To: all
Cc:
Subj: Stubborn and Relics
Time: Thu Jul 10 15:45:10 2025

—
All characters can now use a version of stubborn.
When righteous characters use stubborn when they take a mild wound they’ll go back up to full defense instead of 1/4.

When any character uses stubborn while mildly injured, when they are reduced to 0 DF by a PC they’ll take a severe wound and recover half their DF instead of being knocked out.
You can use arguments such as ‘earth’, ‘delves’ ‘lauriea’ or ‘mine’ after roomlist to limit the rooms you will see.

31 relics have been added to the game, to obtain them you’ll have to first research them and then if you have enough favor will be able to obtain them when on delve or quest plots. Help relic for more information.

[Thomas]

Area: Announcements – Note #219
From: Nova
To: all
Cc:
Subj: Status
Time: Sat Jun 21 08:44:16 2025

—
New command ‘Status’ in combat will show the combat effects you are under.

[Thomas]

—
Area: Announcements – Note #159
From: Nova
To: all
Cc:
Subj: Stores/Windermere/Politics guide
Time: Mon Jun 16 13:17:07 2025

—
Stores will now also provide influence to people who hang out in them, just not as much as shops.

All issues with Windermere staff/students being kicked out should be resolved.

I’ve written help politics guide

Your black iPhone 15 vibrates.

[Thomas]

I also like the AI NPCs.

I think the college would be helped by a couple AI instructors.

I also really like the idea of being able to summon AI demons! In general, my dream has always been to be able to go on AI adventures with my friends.

[Author]

Posts