The White City & Other Dangers

Public Service Announcement!

The White City is intended to be extremely dangerous. If you don't take appropriate precautions going into any danger zone in the game -- mist monsters, Mt Elemnis, the White City -- you are liable to end up with very severe story consequences. It's a good idea to treat things that are dangerous as truly, sincerely dangerous. Take your time to figure out in-game the best ways to deal with business in these sorts of places, from people who you'd imagine truly know and truly have experience. 

Just because the game is soft-permadeath -- meaning that permanent death does happen, but it's more opt-in -- does not mean that there are few consequences in all ways. You could have all of your gear robbed. You could incur a crippling injury with a stat handicap that lasts the rest of your character's life. You could end up stranded some place where there is no immediate hope of being saved. You could go to prison. 

We've always recommended making in-character choices with sincere story weight attached to those decisions. There are dangers, consequences, stakes: and that's what make stories thrilling. The 'help' index, as well as many other resources, are all available to tell you the same philosophy and outlook, and this is the stance we'll take while moderating, as fairly and evenly as possible. 

I think it is important to clarify to players that what is meant as "dangerous" here is not the typical kind of dangerous one would assume from a realistic IRL "slum" zone, where obviously flagrant displays of wealth run a risk of getting you in trouble, but there are methods and ways to defray that risk by sensible precautions. This is what I had always assumed the White City was like in my RP and how I had seen it treated by others, as well. 

But that is NOT the dangerous we are talking here.

To be clear, the White City is a lot closer to an active warzone level of danger. If you enter the White City as a non-resident, you WILL be attacked, KO'd, and your PC's entire inventory taken. This is not likely an avoidable consequence unless you have access to clothing items of extremely low value, which are not currently available on grid to the best of my knowledge. Seemingly reasonable precautions such as having an empty coinpouch will not protect you, nor will wearing a hood with a cloak to cover the remainder of your EQ, as it is likely of high enough value to trigger the attacks. Most starter equipment is also likely high enough value too. 

Combat will probably happen very soon after you enter the area, so the brevity of your stay is not a protection. The NPCs will spawn in sufficient numbers to ensure you are rendered unable to flee or respond in time after the first round of combat, unless you are lucky enough to get a particularly low count and you have some self-defense skill. 

This didn't happen to me on several prior visits to the White City for reasons I don't know - possibly due to not being in a room with an NPC? But it is the ICly and OOCly intended level of danger for the experience, which I certainly was not aware of, and I don't think anybody else quite understood either. Understanding that it is completely unsafe to enter has some pretty significant implications for RP, probably not just for me. 

I'm a big believer that for consequences to have story weight and IC value, players need to have access to the information required to realistically guess what will happen when they do a certain thing. Otherwise, consequences simply become OOC punishments for not sharing a designer's intuition about the reality of a setting/world.

ETA:  To be clear, I'm not trying to start an argument about recent events. I posted because I strongly believed more specificity was needed in this post than "it's extremely dangerous, take precautions" in this situation because those words don't convey the actual IC situation, and many reasonable IC precautions do not have the coded effect you'd expect. I would also suggest the Wiki page be edited to make the actual environment of the White City clearer, and ideally there would be a coded warning when you entered. Even something as simple as an environmental echo by the entry: "Street toughs linger around the gate eyeing the people who enter for valuables; this might be a dangerous neighborhood." I have seen these kind of systems implemented well in other games to ensure people OOCly understood the IC environment they were entering.  

I agree regarding the efficacy of OOC warnings in-game.  Pof Marwa also sent a DM to me suggesting the OOC warning -- and I've implemented it. Much like other things, such as leaping off cliffs, walking through certain dangerous exits (such as the entryways to the White City) will now send a warning and prompt you to repeat the command with an exclamation mark.

Thank you. I think this is a really good and important change to add and I appreciate that my thoughts on it were heard. 

Thank you for such a quick implementation of the idea! Glad that a happy medium could be found here to help align player expectations moving forward.

To be a bit clearer: yes, thugs will very likely show up. No, you are not guaranteed to be beaten to a pulp and get your stuff stolen. There is plenty of warning given ICly that something bad is about to happen, with sufficient chance to turn tail and get away safely, which has happened to my character a couple of times now. If we feel it is extremely important to tell the entire truth to players, this is a very pertinent detail to include, rather than asserting that you WILL be KO'ed and your stuff WILL be stolen. As was said in the original post, though, the danger of the White City has been proclaimed by EVERYONE, both ICly and OOCly, since before the game even opened, so I personally don't think there was any lapse on the part of staff or anyone else in communicating this. My character has been warned by almost every other character he's met in the game and by NPCs. If he doesn't take those warnings seriously and something bad happens, that's his own fault for not listening, imo.

I was thinking about this during the day a bit while at work. The warning totally seems like a good idea, but is there any appropriate precautions for such an area? 

When the cuthroats were roaming outside the White City they tried to attack my character some 5-6 times, though them moving closer was usually also a good indication to go oh nope lemme walk past. The only time of outright combat my character *had* asked a more capable character to follow along on the Via Fortuna, which led to a dialogue from them of "Really?! when the the cuthroat attacked my character a few seconds in. Now obviously having a coded hostile npc doing their thing, they go for it, and some characters toughs may have more sense than others. I couldn't really figure out why sometimes they went to try to rob my character on the street or not as money amounts didn't always spur the attacks. (Rip the npc Sisay for returning to the shadows and his penchant for choosing fights he will not win lol.) I did think it realistic for them to venture to try to rob people elsewhere than just one place. (and simlarly for the guards to be the reason they aren't now.)

I totally get an area being dangerous, but being stun locked never feels fun, and a warning probably wouldn't really prepare for a big load of npcs dropping in. A bit of a lead up/heat for that to scale with a feeling as pof Kamenes said, a street echo for someone to reaally nail in it is a bad idea to go further as toughs gather to eye someone.

With the White City patch notes a few months in july with residency and similar I don't think I would have taken it as so dangerous as 10 npcs or so spawning. If sneaking through is the appropriate precaution then that does make sense with indoors being a breather since they can't spawn there. I'm wondering of what if's (If a new criminal or very broke character) was trying to get residency it makes their first foray just to pay rent reeeal hard if starter items make them a target for wealth amounts. This doesn't give any reasonable way for further characters to rent to get that protection with that danger level, though I don't think it should be safe or easy going within the White City, of course.

The led me to imagining what would be fun as a reasonable way for going in, some way to eye ourselves and so on to go "Yep I look broke af/dangerous enough to not get messed with." Sort of how appraising climbs for difficulty but on a 'will I get robbed check.' though not purely based on wealth. A combo of stuff like group, street smarts, shady arts, strength and intimidation for someone's odds and odds of getting swarmed vs a single npc or none.

I do appreciate there is consequences and death is opt-in and matters more story wise. With games where there is no consequences to death beyond exp, I often struggled with immersion as no conequences led to, well why nots for any wilding decisions and far less thrilling.

Love the ramp up - it really feels like I'm walking through a rough area of town when my character is in the White City now, with all the thugs. It genuinely seems like a place most people simply shouldn't be.

While I fully agree with, support, and am happy about anything that makes the White City feel as dangerous as it's supposed to be, I also feel that it doesn't make a whooole lot of sense for muggers to resort to straight-up murder at first blush unless you A) resist or B) they have specific beef with you.

So just chiming in here to say it would be cool if there were an opportunity to buy the thugs off. They spawn, block the exits, and force you to make a choice. You can either pay what they ask (or maybe they demand a random item in your possession? gimme your shoes, punk), run, or fight. Pay them off and they despawn, and you get left alone for an hour or two so you can conduct your White City business in peace. If you try to run, game on, they'll begin combat and chase you. And if you choose to fight, boy, you better win. But this would at least give players an opportunity to make a meaningful choice about their character's situation rather than just 'zerged to death for walking with too much privilege.'

I also propose that characters with resident status should be able to escort those without it in relative or at least increased safety. If a character who would spawn thugs follows a character who doesn't, then they could have an either nullified or reduced chance of thug spawn, simulating a 'they're with me' level of protection. How well this works could perhaps also scale with the escorting resident's criminal reputation (or street smarts, shady arts, intimidation, as pofIghlaf suggested) -- thugs might still want to mess with someone if the person escorting them isn't a well-known enough figure on the streets. This way, organized groups could enter the White City for RP without as much potential for drama, giving people a reason to seek out residents if needed. e.g. The perfect use case Ighlaf was talking about, where a new character might seek out an escort to help them travel to the apartments and rent a room without trouble.

Further, note that sneaking is no guarantee of safety at all. Without tooting my own horn too hard, I have some pretty ridiculous stealthing stats, and I still get stacks of 5 NPC's spawning on me. I also don't think the visible wealth mechanic is working properly, because I was only visibly wearing a crappy old woollen cloak valued at 504 follies. For comparison, some of the prison rags I rolled into the game with are worth 2400.

That got rambly, but hopefully still comprehensible. I just love White City stuff!

Right now the White City is like a kicked ant's nest paired up with a hornet's nest that someone has been beating with sticks, but prior to this incident I was able to scoot a non-wizarding NPC quickly around the area without getting mobbed and stabbed. Which is not to say that it's remotely safe to be there or that non-residents *should* be trying this, it's just not necessarily impossible.

I will say that the White City is very much a place you should be only if you're being vigilant and not liable to distraction for whatever OOC reason, and that no one should ever go AFK there for any amount of time particularly if there is a mob already visible in the room with you. There is no guarantee whatsoever that you can't be discovered and advanced on even if you're distracted for just a short period of time. We encourage mindful playing of Avaria in general, and discourage distracted play (it's in the Rules and Norms on the wiki, though it's only a norm), and this is even more the case in the rare instances a person is doing something ICly hazardous. And while obviously things happen and sometimes distraction is unavoidable, it's important to us that players remain attentive to the game world around them as much as they possibly can.

There's definitely plenty of room for tweaking things in the White City specifically and developing the mechanics of neighborhoods more generally, and there is a lot that's eventually planned for this. One thing I've always wanted to have is a reputation that a PC can develop specifically with the neighborhood they live in, so that through a combination of RP and coded chores (though chiefly RP) a PC could build up a high rep with their neighborhood. Being able to escort non-residents through a neighborhood without pulling negative or dangerous attention would be a great perk for residency rep. Pilgrim and I also originally discussed having a SURRENDER option if you get attacked by muggers, so that they would still take your stuff but wouldn't kill you. But unfortunately, like many other planned features this hasn't yet been implemented. So there's still a lot of work to be done and constructive suggestions are appreciated.

As far as residency in the White City goes, if there is a PC who wants (for some insane reason!) to move into the neighborhood and become a resident there, this is something that would be good as a personal storyline for that PC. It really shouldn't be that easy for an outsider to just decide one day that they want to live in the White City, and everyone immediately accepts them and they live happily ever after. But as a long-term story, this has interesting potential. For new PCs that roll in with a written-up background of having been born and raised in the White City, staff can add that residency to the PC when they're approved so they can be safe in the neighborhood to start with.