Southside Ideas

[Geras]

So I have to say personally I'm not a big fan of the idea of having mooks protecting the Southside from incursions, and I was wondering what other people think of maybe alternatives to that?

Some ideas:

-an actual x-block (perhaps over a smaller area)
-a warning over the thief channel when lawfuls move around in the southside
-a town crier like warning when lawfuls move around in the southside
-requiring RPA for lawful people to go down in force
-requiring RPA for lawful people to go down at all?

I dunno. I'm just trying to think of ways to make the Southside a bitter safer for thieves & friends without having a bunch of randomly aggressive mobs around. The random dead bodies it creates tend to hurt my suspension of disbelief on my Reeve a bit lol, and it seems like not quite the most elegant solution. Thoughts?

[Geras]

Another suggestion in conjunction with the warnings: More ways to leave the Southside (exits to the sewers?)

[Kinaed]

Why do you dislike the mobs? *curious*

[Geras]

They seem a bit inelegant is all. I mean mobs are always going to behave in silly ways, attacking the wrong people for the wrong reasons and getting themselves killed, or getting others killed. They're a good deterrent for the low-ranking lawful types, but they're never going to be effective at stopping the higher-ups. Those are the people that Southsiders really care about avoiding.

I do agree with their intent (ie to encourage people to use the Southside for shadiness while still letting the lawful types raid it on occaison), but there must be a more elegant solution to accompanying that, no?

They also generate a bunch of dead bodies for the Reeves to investigate, which can be annoying...

[Takta]

I am right now working on a script to have them flee when below 25% health and not attack anyone while that hurt. There are a few bugs that keep it from being operational just yet, but I have high hopes for making it work. That means no more 'fighting to the death' and no more bodies unless somebody specifically follows and kills them, which should do a lot to fix the weirdness.

I'll also note that the strongest mobs are actually strong enough to injure even PCs with their combat skills maxed out, so nobody is downright -safe- in the area. People should be RPing these injuries even if the code HP regens pretty quickly! That's the downside to no more crit wounds in combat, alas.

[Geras]

You might want to look at the flip side of that too though, in that these mobs are unlikely to outright murder people without orders from Tenebrae. Perhaps they should wake up in a Thief cell if they get beaten too badly by these thugs?

[Temi]

You might want to look at the flip side of that too though, in that these mobs are unlikely to outright murder people without orders from Tenebrae. Perhaps they should wake up in a Thief cell if they get beaten too badly by these thugs?

Players should not die from being beaten up unless they are actively finished. So, mobs shouldn't be murdering people. Just battering them and leaving them knocked out and vulnerable on the ground.

I don't think we want to do something automatic which will gives the thieves the responsibility of seeing to these people's roleplay. That should be an active choice, taken on by themselves and enacted by their own actions.

[Geras]

Fair enough.

[Clockwork]

As my own 2 cents, I absolutely fervently despise xblocks. They make sense to me in one place, and that's as stand-ins for things like magical wards.

In all other cases, the xblocks are essentially stand-ins for guards or some form of gatekeeper. I support making those guards/gatekeepers actual IC entities that can be snuck past or killed, rather than having to resort to RPA to bypass them.

[Geras]

That's a good point... and it's how some of the "xblocks" work currently to isn't it? Hmm.