The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
What does it mean to be a revolutionary in SD?

I saw this come up in the Corporate Branding thread and I agreed with the suggestion it deserved it's own thread.

Now, this is probably going to sound a little emo and angsty and I apologize, but sometimes certain things hit wrong.

Without going into IC details and information. As a new player here in SD, I got to be apart of something pretty damn amazing with 45 days of build up, it was the highlight of my RP here and I hope whoever the driving player behind it was, knows just how much fun I had with it.

The problem is that players didn't show up.

This is just my opinion and I welcome discussion on it, but if you're taking an anti-corporate stance, or you're trying to fight the status quo to influence change in any setting or any game, if you're only talking, and not trying to take action, or mobilizing with other players/people, then you aren't a revolutionary, you're the chum on the other side of the TV who thinks they're apart of it by supporting it from afar.

Just like the protesters on the streets in America throughout 2020. If you aren't on the ground taking those risks, then are you really contributing on the level same?

I think It's disrespectful if done on an OOC level, but perfectly fine on an IC level to consider yourself 'one of them'.

Be a vocal supporter, be a financial supporter, be something, even better, actually be a revolutionary and take a literal stand.

The resulting events really had a negative OOC impact on me, it went from the literal series of RP that made me love Sindome completely, to feeling frustrated and disenfranchised with the player base. I'm slowly getting over it and struggling to find new RP that excites me as I had been in the past month and a half, but it's a little bit of a struggle.

I have hope and I believe it'll happen, but this topic really felt like it needed some "real-talk" time.

I know it's not everyone's RP to fight the system, and I definitely do not believe this was an intentional snubbing of a player's event.

But in the back of my mind, I can't help but think people are already so overwhelmed with consequences for simply communicating discontent, that any actual action putting them on the front lines is likely viewed as character suicide. When I think bout that, it kind of feels like a systemic issue that should be given some discussion time on an OOC level.

How do we enable players to feel like it's not pointless to participate in one of the primary lures of gameplay?

City Corporations

Corporate power built this city, drives its economy and through the councils, controls its future. They believe that they can do anything... and for the most part that's true. Will you work for them as a corpie, fight against them as a mixer or simply leverage them for biz?

However mobilizing players to do any plot, of any kind, especially multiple players on the same day, at the same time, has always, and will always, bring practical challenges.

It tends to be one of the reasons that larger plots sometimes focus more on involving more reliable veteran players.

If you don't know what I mean by that, then your character doesn't either. All IC.

It kinda feels a little harsh for you to openly admit that one event was likely not worth the risk, and then try to feed me hypothetical unknown, shadowy efforts by other people as if that resolves the whole problem of arbitrary risk/threat evaluation dissuading player participation in themely player plots.

I still worry that lack of participation in front line activity may be a systemic problem that could use some gameplay analysis.

I thank you for your response regardless.

I still worry that lack of participation in front line activity may be a systemic problem that could use some gameplay analysis.

It is a systemic problem in the sense that plots are often swimming uphill to engage players who may not be interested in participating for a multitude of reasons. Some of it IC, some of it OOC.

Sometimes this gets generalized and blamed on some players being too cautious but I think that's a simplification overall. It's a net result of a lot of different factors that has no one cause or solution.

Sindome tends towards very, very long term play. Players who have been working on stuff for months or years are generally going to be disinclined to jeopardize any of it for a short-term plot unless they have some pretty compelling reasons to.

Is this okay? Yes. Is this expected? Yes. What's not expected is the endless bloodbath that sometimes follows to ensure mix terrorists suffer for as long as possible. This is not something that's limited to one player, it is to be blamed on the system as a whole. Great strides have been taken to lessen punishment for most things though, so maybe this is less of an issue now than it was for me.

Moving on, the next problem with being a revolutionary is likely how hard it is to profit off of being one. If it's hard to profit then it's hard to keep the revolution going. In the end everything is doomed to become an act or half a lie because of what has to be done to keep momentum up, which is maybe 'themely.' It's not as if there's a mix organization not tied to the corps that has the money to fund actual, serious terrorists.

Finally, I have also mentioned before that it would be nice if the rewards set for the heads of corporate citizens (By NPCs) were actually proportionate to risk. You may win the battle, but you're probably not going to win the war. Having the chy from the successful hit a megacorp and the Hall are now after you for would make getting back on your feet or even hiding easier.

I understand that staff may not want to overload the system with magically summoned chy, but gear cost and time to pull most of these jobs off far outweighs what's being paid out.