Future Events

Khizan

To the best of my knowledge, Magickal forces have been the antagonist/start of one event, the event that got rid of old fashion steel smithing.

Anti-magick forces have been the antagonist of zero events, as far as I can remember.

Demonic/Undead forces, on the other hand...

• Several major "Demons are out and murdering everything" bashing events
• Thalec the Lich
• The modern liches sending out their waves of undead soldiers against the world.
• Two major wave-based bashing areas consist of undead.
• A necromancer killed Cimi's essence and unleashed zombies.
• Several major bosses are undead.
• Demons killed the Gods
• And just recently, a Necromancer wanted people to sacrifice children.
• There's probably more I cannot think of right now.

In a game that's not supposed to have "good guys" and "bad guys", one side really does seem to be getting an unfair representation here. It's supposed to be an uncertain balance of powers where no one side is right and where an argument could be made for any side being the "good guys", but that's clearly not how it is.  There are three major NPC enemy groups in this game: Demons, Undead, and Horde. The demonic circle depends on a full 2/3rds of those enemies for their power source, which is kind of ridiculous. 

It's a bit late to remove it completely, but could we just like, completely and totally stop harping on that crap for a while? Maybe have a few bashing areas full of Menonon-esque zealots instead of yet another ancient temple full of undead? Maybe some AM themed boss battles? Could a wizard do something for once, instead of it always being a necromancer? Could unpredictable magical research cause an invasion of elementals? Can we get recurring waves of AM zealots attacking us from overseas? Inquisitors burning witches at the stake?

We know that Demonic deals with unsafe powers. Our decade in the spotlight has made sure everybody knows that. Can somebody else get a turn now?

Caelya

I always thought it would be interesting if there were factions that were more 'mundane'. It's the Age of Mortals now, and especially with cults springing up all over the world, we should be seeing more Godless heathens trying to take over via sheer force and anarchy. This means bandit uprisings (perhaps with noble beginnings), warlords that aren't Horde (we have a whole slew of races to choose from, especially now), slavers (of magickers and demoners). Or even entrepreneurs who might have questionable motives completely removed from magick/demonic forces (drug dealers?) Or hell, we could even see an attempt to resurrect one of the fallen Gods at this point, which could pretty ambiguously involve demonic, magick, or anti-magick forces, if any at all. Maybe the group is just deranged and ropes us into believing them for a while? 

There are so many possibilities for conflict wherein serious thought is involved beyond 'Oh, my faction is evil and we kill babies, so we'll choose this evil-looking option'. The biggest thing to try to incorporate is that grey area, where none of the options are so insidious or righteous that one of the circles would automatically, canonically be obligated to choose it. 

Ahkan

Holy crap, we don't even know where the Hasnar event is going and we're already sadfacing.

-Magick has been the antagonist twice. The smithing event where a mage turned everything into rust and the God death event where people pushed the red button because "I knew something bad was going to happen and it leads to murder."

It would be nice to move away from Mickey Mouse evil, but that's something that's universally understood by the admin and by the population at large.

Khizan

Magick pushed the button that let the demons out, yes. And after the Demon Lords killed off the Gods, Kinsarmar fought the rest of the world over what to do with the Hammer.

Which is all beside the point. We freed the Demon Lords who then sent their demon armies against the mortal cities. It seems pretty clear that the main antagonists of this event were, in fact, demonic in nature.

Iniar

Sarrius, unleash the Unicorn Gods!

Ahkan

Bad decision making can't be an antagonist? Since when?

Not to mention, didn't Kinsarmar get all pk-murder-rp ZOMG, DON'T KILL THE GUYS THAT KILLED OUR GODS. KILL THESE DUDES WHO TRIED TO HELP US.

That seems sort of antagonistic.

Edit 3:

I think this event is pretty awesome. I don't even care that we're rolling mickey mouse evil. They've taken player feedback and they're rolling an event that's possibly on rails and they're allowing players to have input and have real effects from their involvement and roleplay. I'm pretty sure "Let's build an orphanage in the Blue Knuckle" or "Let's have Lotan build an orphange" were plans for the event. It's been pretty cool to see "Hey, that sounds cool, throw me a room description." Continue roleplay. Bam. That room desc you just wrote is now you're new orphanage. You get from this event what you put into it.

TL/DR: This is a first. Let them get some practice at it.

Khizan

No matter what side did it, the result was "evil demons kill the gods"; the event was yet another example of "demons are bad, mmmk" no matter which side released the demons.

And the side that released it doesn't matter; my point was not that the demonic circle gets cast as the bad guys in all the events, it was that the demonic circle uses undeath and demons as their power source and those sources get cast as the bad guys in all the events. This kind of taints the demonic circle by association, especially when the other two circles never seem to have their power sources cast in a negative light.

Pure magick? For all the supposed dangers of uncontrolled magical experimentation and how they cannot be trusted to harness the power of the Gods and all that jazz, it's been at fault for one single event.

Anti-magick zealotry? Never harmed anything. We've had armies of demons and undead at the gates, but we've never had an AM army storm our townes to cleanse them. 

Demons or undead, on the other hand, have been the driving force behind basically every event that's not a Horde event. The magick circle started the war that resulted in the death of the Gods, and the tool they used to kick it off was an army of demons. 

What I want is for future events not to be "Oh, no, a necromancer", but to be a reckless pure magick experiment that goes horribly wrong or zealots burning Magickal/Demonic townsfolk for witchcraft. I'd like it if the beliefs at the heart of other circles could be shown to be as obviously dangerous/flawed as demonic's.

Bathan

I'd honestly like to see groups that are unaffiliated. Maybe a cult that rips the diachaim right from the bodies of casters and feasts upon it, or a group who swears by engineering augmentations and begins trying to replace natural life with mechanically altered creations. The one perk about Imperian's mythos being so poorly fleshed out is that there's a ton of potential for antagonists beyond Mark Hamill's version of the Joker, which is kind of who we've been fighting for nine or so years.

Ahkan

I wonder how long we can keep this stating the obvious contest going. It totally needed it's own thread.

Writing non-standard bad guys (aka: not black hats) is pretty hard. The only good villains in Imperian have been secondary characters or celani. There's a certain amount of time that needs to be invested to really hash out a good villain. You also have to be able to improvisation and adapt on the fly to the hilarious variety of derp that will be fired at you interacting with mortals. It takes practice. And that sort of practice isn't something that most of the game is familiar with since it's rp my way or I'm going to afk.

Jeremy Saunders

Ahkan said:

Holy crap, we don't even know where the Hasnar event is going and we're already sadfacing.

This event is mostly done. We have a couple other request we are working on for it. We have two more events that are waiting to get going over the next couple of weeks. This one was a semi test to see how things would work. We will keep events running as long as players want to do it.

Jeremy Saunders

On the overall theme of this thread, we are definitely trying to work in events that are more neutral in taking sides so that circles do not need to go in thinking something like - 'Well, there are demons, I know what side I should be on'. I really, really would like players to have to get together with the people in their organizations and make decisions based on what they want to do vs what they 'think' they should be doing.

Bathan

Jeremy said:

Ahkan said:

Holy crap, we don't even know where the Hasnar event is going and we're already sadfacing.

This event is mostly done. We have a couple other request we are working on for it. We have two more events that are waiting to get going over the next couple of weeks. This one was a semi test to see how things would work. We will keep events running as long as players want to do it.

I'm assuming you were basically testing to see who Imperian's protagonist is. YOU HAVE YOUR ANSWER.