Dear Leia

From FiranMUX

The Dear Leia column is one in which I take interesting questions from the player base and answer them here. It is my hope that I will regularly get enough questions that we can keep posting throughout the year. In the old days, I used to travel to FiranCon and let people ask me whatever they wanted. Since I did not get to do that in 2009, it is my hope that we can relive the spirit through here. Many of the exciting and cool changes on Firan, like autosleep, came from these. So, I'd like to hear from you! If you have an interesting comment or question, please @mail Leia directly. It's fine to spam my mailbox with fun questions to answer! If I use your question, you will get 2 CP...just for asking a question! There is very little limit to the range of subjects that are acceptable, but, try to keep them clean.

Contents 1 December 21, 2009: New to Firan 1.1 Go Through the Policy Rooms 1.2 Add Your Clan Channel 1.3 Find the Help Channel 1.4 Leave Your Room 1.5 Find Roleplay 2 December 15, 2009: On Weather and Imagination 3 December 10, 2009: Entering Politics 3.1 Patience 3.2 Action 3.3 Allies 3.4 OOC Truthfulness

December 21, 2009: New to Firan

Dear Leia,
What do you think is the most important thing for a newbie to learn about first?

Oh man, I remember my first days on Firan. Ana had already started playing the game and I just logged in to wander around and look. I was scared out of my mind! I looked over the roster and actually chose Vinik Istariniad. Oh yes, that's right, I was the noob Vinik during the Brinna/Judanarius fiasco. I'm not ashamed to say that I never had a good idea of what was going on (which might still be true). Here is my semi-helpful guide for logging in:

Go Through the Policy Rooms

You can't do anything until you go through the policy rooms. So, you might as well start there. You're going to want to go IC and start fighting Shamibelians or courting a noble or designing the perfect sword. You can't do this without going through the policy rooms. They should be right off the location you log in, so, there's convenience! Once you type I AGREE, then, you're free to type 'ic'. This will place you in your home.

Add Your Clan Channel

Before you do anything, I recommend that you add your clan channel. The people there are helpful and can answer many questions about the clan. They also have all been new once (or still are), so, they are pretty sympathetic when you run outside IC without any pants. The best way to determine the correct clan channel is to type '@sheet' or '@finger <character name>' which will give you the channel name. Most names are pretty easy to determine, except Gold Dragon. Leave it to the dragons to be difficult. Here is a list, remember, the channel name is case sensitive:

• Griffon
• Cockatrice
• Ticanee
• Eagle
• Chimera
• Bear
• GoldDragon
• Hydra
  
  

To add a clan channel, you want to use addcom and set the alias you want to use. For example, on the eagle channel you might addcom ea=Eagle. Then you can use 'ea <text>' to talk there.

Find the Help Channel

If you can figure nothing else out, you should be able to find the help channel. All players start out with the help channel alias 'h'. This means you can go 'h I need help!' at any time and find answers to a variety of questions. While, you are likely to be shown a help or news file that covers your question. It's a good starting place. Once you become more familiar with the help/news files, you'll find it's a lot easier to find the answer to your question. Firan can be overwhelming and some people, like myself, are shy. I promise that we welcome questions and will find answers to them no matter what they are.

Leave Your Room

Leaving your room is probably the most important skill you can learn. There are very few things you can get started on Firan without learning to leave your room. Not all games have coded lock systems like Firan does and I was surprised by it myself! Most characters will begin with keys and a keyring. If you have any of these in your inventory, you should try 'pass out'. Not all exits have the out alias. If this doesn't work, try 'pass <exit name>'. If you don't have keys or the proper keys to get out of your room or house, please get on help and let someone know. We try to catch them, but, sometimes we miss a key when we create them.

Find Roleplay

The biggest piece of advice I can give, however, is to roleplay first. The urge is going to be strong to try and research every coded system. There is lots of cool coded systems that you can get involved with! But for the new player, I recommend trying out a scene first and then learning the intricate details of crafting or employment or eating last. There will be plenty of quiet moments to search through help and news files. I don't remember anything from my first days about code. What I do remember is going to the pier because my character was a sailor and there was chaos there! Nydiam was being pulled under water by a Kraken and I was there for the rescue. I had no idea what I was doing, but, I felt elated that I got to roleplay with Nydiam!!

Last week, I wrote about the weather system. This week I want to know what your favorite coded system is and why! You can answer here at: Favorite Coded System.

December 15, 2009: On Weather and Imagination

Dear Leia,

For the weather, can we tell how much snow or how much rain is on the ground? It would bring a bit more realism and effect the general out door and indoor RP greatly if we could tell. Perhaps I'm missing messages or code.. I've been posing it's about waist deep in some areas.

At first glance, this question seems to be just about weather, but, it brings up a bigger point on Firan that relates to storytelling. At face value, the weather system is pretty standard. Many of the rooms are described with some basic weather information that gives an idea of what the area is like during different seasons or times of the day. If you want to find out the full weather without waiting for an emit, you can always use the command '@time'. It is the easiest way to get a quick overview of the IC time of the day as well as whether that byrrus is just right or will be too hot! The @time command can be used both IC and OOC, as well as, indoors and outdoors.

The bigger point of this question is really, how much should Firan staff regulate story wise? As a staffer, I have fallen into the pit of realism and accuracy many times. It is an easy habit to get into on staff due to the sheer flood of information that comes our direction. It's easy to get tied up in realism as players because a lot of Firan is dictated by specific guidelines. For example, NPC reactions are not something players can necessarily control and they are fairly specific and they add to the non-consent and "realism" of the game. On the other hand, there are so many great arguments against realism. After all, if we were being real, a goddess named Uf would not send people dreams and nightmares. (That said, I really have no proof that she doesn't in real life, but, I'd love that job). I think the importance of sticking to the letter of the game really depends on the reach. In the case of one room of people wanting to RP they are waist deep in snow, I think that this reaches just a room so there's no harm in deciding it is a little ice, a few inches, or a couple feet. Even a few rooms, you could decide the amount of snow in it. Where staff gets concerned is when you decide to RP a game wide blizzard, then, it might be time to back off on the interpretation of the emits.

I've said a lot about weather here, but, this sort of reasoning can be applied to all sorts of things on Firan. Do you want to roleplay that you fell and cut yourself? Why not? Go ahead. Obviously, it won't have the same risk as actual life threatening GM applied damage, but, there's no harm in giving it a try. Want to pose that someone slipped a bug into your room? Why not? That's fine too. Because of the non-consent style of Firan, it's easy to imagine that there is no consent at all. The truth is consent is a very big part of the game and is even encouraged in many places. I think the success of the game has been built on both great non-consent moments like wars and god plots and on consent moments where players planned brawls ahead of time or talked out some petty fight OOC so they could create an interesting story IC. If you want to pose you're wading around in a lot of snow, go for it! It's definitely a place where you have that freedom to choose.

Last time I wrote, I talked about Firan Politics. If you have something to say on this, please see this excellent thread on the forums: What political advice do you have for new players?

December 10, 2009: Entering Politics

Dear Leia,
What is the number one lesson anyone breaking into the Firan political scene should take to heart?

I thought about this question while making a bagel. I couldn't just narrow it down to one lesson, but, I've decided to provide three here. These aren't the only lessons that are important. There's also a lot of good advice that can be found at The Proxy by Anonymous as well. The four lessons I have selected are patience, action, allies, and OOC truthfulness.

Patience

One of the immediate killers of the political and social game is a lack of patience. Firan is a quickly changing world. Friends become enemies and social points go up and down. Not only that, but, roleplay takes time and a vast majority of people can't have multiple big game changing scenes in one day. One of the big mistakes I find people make is they try to act without having the killing blow in whatever they want to do. This could be anything from landing a big promotion to judge to falling a political enemy to earning the romance of your character's dreams. It is human nature to want right now, but so often, the desire to get something outweighs good logical patience. More so, if you take a character and try to bust out all their goals in a matter of minutes, you get left with nothing to do. I once read a critique of the Matrix movies and the issue that the reviewer brought up was that he liked the first movie better when Neo had no idea what was going on and was learning about himself and the world around him. The article noted that the journey was more interesting than the end. I think FiranMUX is the same. I think politically successful people are not so slow to act that nothing ever happens. But, they are willing to take smaller immediate actions that build up over time. When you see it as a back and forth social game over time, you begin to enjoy the conflicts with others in a different way. If you base success on enjoyment and smaller gains, I think players feel more successful. After all, winning and losing on Firan is complex. Since, sometimes winning isn't winning and losing isn't losing. For example, Argus died a traitor to the Republic but his death set off Gold Dragon civil wars that established a future for the clan and new heroes. I think Argus as a character would relish chaos even after his death and the effect. In a small way, he had some certain measure of success even in death. Often players who take these risks feel really bad. It's hard to communicate how character failure can be seen as incredible RP and here I go way off the point. One day, I'll get better at communicating this risk versus reward to players.

Action

I know. I just told everyone to be patient. And now, I'm telling people not to be afraid to act. Unfortunately, Firan is such a balance that both of these are very important to a new person in politics. First, you log in and you consider your options and make some plans. Then, you determine how to enact those plans. Eight years ago, there weren't as many people on Firan and it was a lot easier to mentor everyone in regards as to what to do. It really isn't possible to fuel it on that level as it was then. I know staff sometimes seems hard to get to. We are just so busy! However, if you have an action and it makes you nervous, you can @request to get a feel for it. Generally, we won't necessarily tell you whether it would be successful or not, but, sometimes it's easy for us to give some sort of risk indicator to a next step. There's never going to be any guarantees. Even as a wizard, because so many other people will react, I can only give you an educated guess of whether something will be successful or not. Generally, staff talks a situation out until we find some sort of semi-balanced perspective. Half the time, I'll think about something and then another opinion in the group completely changes it or moderates it. I guess the moral here is...be patient but realize nobody really knows at any time what might happen! We're all in the same boat. Even Steph, she has been completely surprised by actions.

Allies

Allies are a tricky situation. When I say allies, I mean true absolute IC allies. A lot of us have people we roleplay with and are friends with that we would call allies. When I say allies, I mean people who will take a figurative or real bullet (arrow?) for you. Firan is a top to bottom hierarchy socially from gods, to royals, to nobles, to commoners, to outcasts, to that rat the Old City fought over in the sewers. And, that hierarchy is made more complicated by the fact that sometimes both some powerful outcasts and some royals have the ability to protect a person. It's important that commoners search out nobles and royals to be friends with. This is because powerful families have the kind of social stamina to weather problem situations. In the same respect, nobles and royals need to ally with commoners. If the common people don't like a family or person, they could lose all their social stamina and not be able to weather problem situations. It seems like a great idea to player the commoner who thinks nobles are too snotty or the noble who has a disdain for any commoner, but if a character can't even see the political worth to these relationship, he or she may find social hot water! To really play the political game, you must consider that it's not about who you personally like or dislike. It's about who can give you the most stuff. Stuff can be almost anything from stenis to protection. (And sometimes, getting these things requires a person to humble themselves. This is a talk for another day but it's okay to do this to get "stuff".)

OOC Truthfulness

I considered whether or not to include a fourth advice when I already gave two over the one that was asked for. I think this piece of advice is very important. It really doesn't matter what kind of character you play. I have played the gambit of PC and NPCs. Some were good and some were bad. Some were killers, some got around eesha-wise, and some were heroes. In the IC world, it's totally okay from an OOC perspective to do all kinds of things good or bad. But whatever you are doing and no matter how you spin it IC, be honest with yourself about what kind of character you are playing. I, myself, have fallen into the trap of thinking like my character and forgot that I wasn't actually a nice person ICly. You don't have to OOCly tell other people, or admit it IC. But if you're playing some archetype or you're a character trying to game the social and political system to get something, be honest with yourself that it's what you're doing. I think people with political success on Firan understand that not all of their characters have righteous intentions. They understand that these are negative intentions either by ancient standards or by modern standards. I think that the ability to do all of the above is helped by understanding criminal activities are criminal even if the character justifies them or ruining someone socially is a cruel thing to do even if the Firan social standard leaves complete room for it or trying to undermine someone to achieve something is risky behavior even though OOCly I heartily support such activities.

Hopefully, you found this a worthwhile read. There are plenty of other pieces of advice that could be given here. This is only a small section of the various pieces of Firan politics. If it helps one person, then, it was truly worth the time to write!