@Zephyr said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
Cujo never saw the importance in the day to day on the game. He and Banshee both argued with me that posts were enough in the main story and people should just be cool with those and RP off what they read, offering no avenue to actually participate in it. They don’t know how to deal with the social side of the game, because everyone on staff now is either antisocial, or hateful.
They poisoned the well, and now they’re shocked that everything is dying.
That was as much Banshee as Cujo, and both of them are antisocial and hateful. They genuinely see players as a problem, though they behave differently about this. Being lazy and self-centered, Cujo tries to avoid dealing with PCs at all unless they’re kissing his ass, and then nothing is too good for them. Banshee’s different: Players cause him to have to actually do his job. Being a self-absorbed deadbeat of a coder, Banshee hates any work he doesn’t decide for himself to do, necessary or not. He also believes any PC is a potential cheater (like him), and the badly-written and incomplete help system on the game is in that state because he doesn’t want players knowing too much about how the game actually works. The way he sees it, they might become better cheaters than he is! So he hates them for being potential competition, whether they actually are or not (most aren’t).
A real problem with the First Order in the early days was that Banshee was plotting the arc for the faction, but not only almost never GMed for his own faction, but never told anyone else what he was planning, where the faction was going, or even what Outer Rim mudball everyone was supposed to be fighting on this week. Since nobody knew what in the universe they were supposed to be doing, there wasn’t much the actual players in the FO could do, RP-wise, not that this mattered to Banshee (or Cujo, either). Small wonder the faction rotted away to nothing, twice, when he was fachead.
Eventually they gave the Kylo Ren fachead bit to a different self-absorbed jerk (giving Banshee an equally twinky Knight of Ren bit so he’d let go of the Kylo bit), but it was still Cujo and Banshee who really ran the faction, mostly without consulting the actual fachead. The end result was that nobody really knew what the First Order (and its replacement for Stormtroopers, the Vanguard) was doing at any point in time. It was a terrible case of decision-making schizophrenia that ended up costing the faction players.
The fact that Banshee knows very little about the Force played into a lot of code and policy decisions. For instance, Ysalamiri, which absolutely wall off the Force within a certain distance of themselves, make Force use literally impossible: There’s no Force to use inside the Ysalamiri’s personal bubble. But since that would cause real problems for Banshee’s overpowered Force User bits, it only raises the difficulty to use the Force by 25, enough to nerf the average PC Force User but not even slow down twink-bits like Banshee’s, even if he isn’t spoofing the rolls.
How do I know Banshee isn’t exactly an expert on the Force? Well…
(:Public:) 1says, “I like Kylo Ren honestly because I knew he wasn’t a Sith going in. He’s not going to have the same control or mindset. For what he’s supposed to be, a dark Jedi TRYING to be a Sith, but isn’t being trained as one, and doesn’t have access to Sith knowledge. Naturally he falls short of Vader, Sidious, and the rest.”
(:Public:) 4 says, “It’s rare to see somebody where it feels like the LIGHT side is too strong in them, so they have trouble staying on the dark path.”
(:Public:) 1 says, “For what he’s supposed to be written as it makes sense. It’s like a Force user trying to self train as a Jedi. Assuming Snoke is dead, Kylo Ren has to train himself, and I don’t think Snoke was a Sith either.”
(:Public:) 1 says, “If Kylo Ren managed to find a Sith holocron capable of teaching him it could change everything. Maybe Darth Sidious created one, and finished it before his death. I doubt that Abrams wants to go in that direction but… without any Sith left alive there’s no other way for him to be initiated.”
(:Public:) Banshee says, “Thats the thing about the Sith. None of that is really needed. All you need is to stand up and say, ‘I’m a Sith, Harry’ and not be murdered immediatel.”
(:Public:) Banshee says, “Thats how Darths are born.”
(:Public:) 5 assumed they were born when one helmet loves another helmet very much.
(:Public:) 1 says, “Remember that scene in episode 3 where Anakin kneels before Sidious and literally becomes Darth Vader? That’s an initiation. That’s the only time where Sidious’ voice drops to a low growl and you here this other voice talking along side him in some “demonic” (for the lack of a better word) language. It’s not enough to call yourself one. There’s a real initiation into that lineage and tradition. Without it you have no conncetion to the “true power of the Darkside.””
(:Public:) 1 says, “hear*”
(:Public:) 2 says, “I dunno, I have a hard time believing you can’t tap into the dark side unless an old man calls you Darth.”
(:Public:) 1 says, “You can tap into the Darkside but to actually be a Sith you have to be initiated. Ventress tried to do the same thing and fell short. Dooku called her out pretty fast.”
(:Public:) Banshee says, “Nah, I mean, I’m sure people feel that way.”
(:Public:) 3 says, “The Dark Side isn’t exclusive to the Sith, but they have their own unique teachings and perspectives. Anyone who can use the Force can fall to the Dark Side. That’s the one enemy that never goes away: Yourself.”
(:Public:) Banshee says, “But there’s not really more to it. The Sith line isn’t some magic unbroken chain.”
(:Public:) Banshee says, “They’ve been murdered and extinct more than a couple times.”
(:Public:) 1 says, “Yes but every time it’s happened, someone found a holocron, someone found some Sith text, and it was reborn.”
(:Public:) 4 says, “The Dark Side will find a way.”
(:Public:) 1 says, “The Sith is a religion, the Darkside is not the Sith no… but it is its’ own tradition.”
(:Public:) 1 says, “That’s the tl;dr version”
(:Public:) 1 says, “I think with Rey it’s similar. She’s tapping into the LS but isn’t really a Jedi in the way that say… Obi Wan or Yoda was. I’m interested to see where they take this… I hope it’s going to be interesting”
The names of the players have been changed in case they’re still there (unlikely as that is), since we know certain unscrupulous people are reading this channel. Note the smug, condescending way in which Banshee tries to tell the other players they’re wrong without telling them they’re wrong, even though they’re not wrong.
The great revising (spelled n-e-r-f-i-n-g for blaster pistols) of all the blaster weapons also came out of this: Banshee’s bits don’t use blasters, so it’s no skin off his nose. But it made actual players miserable, and Banshee’s all about that.
Also, the new Kylo Ren refused to take part in any cross-faction RP if he wasn’t GMing it. And when he GMed, the First Order steamrolled everything, mostly because he insisted on some very heavy, ham-fisted caveats to make sure it happened. Actual PCs, especially Resistance PCs, were limited to what weapons and gear they were carrying. But First Order NPCs could twink anything into existence nearly at will, which ruined more than one Resistance plot.
In one plot, the Resistance only got their Acolyte Cannon because Kylo wasn’t GMing it. Even then, Kylo twinked his way into knowing the mission was going to happen, jumped the FO flagship into the system where it was happening within five minutes of the attack starting, launched a shuttle from the flagship and flew it to the station in two rounds (despite launching from much farther away than the Resistance capship did, and the way they did it made it essentially immune to attack from the Resistance X-Wings in the system), and within another round Kylo and a Knight of Ren PC who was just as twinky as he was were ambushing the boarding party and slaughtering their way through Resistance PCs and the one Resistance technician NPC present (the Telekinetic Attack power reliably one-shotted characters and allowed no defense, and it was the only one they used against PCs and NPCs, probably because it reliably one-shotted characters and allowed no defense). The only reason they didn’t twink-murder the entire boarding party was because one quick-thinking PC, the only one still standing, got a turbolift door open, guided the two downed PCs inside, and shut the door before they could TK her, too. With Resistance PCs off the murder list because the turbolift was already going down, and seeing the Acolyte Cannon being lifted away from its mountings by a Resistance ship, they tried to destroy the cannon out of spite. Ektor, the Resistance’s most active scenerunner, let them damage it a little. According to Kylo, they deserved that simply for showing up to a scene they never should’ve known was happening.
That’s the way Kylo was: He would actively try to ruin anything that might help the Resistance gain even a slight advantage, up to and including cheating, and Banshee and Cujo let him do it every time. With the Acolyte Cannon scene, they claimed there was a PC spy (who didn’t exist) who tipped Kylo off, likely via a scene run by Banshee, who wouldn’t deny Kylo anything. Cujo allowed the scene, and only told Ektor, the scenerunner, about it at the last minute. This wasn’t the first scene of Ektor’s that Kylo had crapped on, so he wasn’t happy at all.
After that, Kylo wouldn’t go near a cross-faction event unless he was running it. A few times, he had other players say they were GMing just so anybody else would show up to be murdered. For example:
.-============= Clash on Aridus - Thu Aug 29 19:30:00 2019 EST =============-.
The Jedi Order will learn the date and time that the Knights of Ren will be staging the execution of a captured Jedi, Angouri Dros, for crimes against the galaxy on the desert world of Aridus.
Jedi and Knights of Ren are invited to participate in the clash, as well as ONLY the ground forces of the Resistance/First Order. This will be on location at Aridus, and if you choose to participate, understand that this is a high-stakes event and consequences will be enforced.
GM: Rey (Ry)
Group(s): Jedi Order, Knights of Ren, Resistance, First Order
Signups: Oran Arcantael and Kylo Ren
`-=========== Clash on Aridus - Thu Aug 29 19:30:00 2019 EST - 2 ===========-’
Rey never GMed anything, to my knowledge, and would go along with anything staff wanted. Kylo was the GM. And the reason they wanted ground forces only was because all of the active Resistance FCs and the most active players were pilots; everybody else would be an NPC or a new player that Kylo and his twinky Knight of Ren pal could massacre without the slightest risk to their bits. The justification was that the FO didn’t have any pilots, but they actually had several; one of them had been idling in a starfighter cockpit for weeks at that point. Most of the Jedi PCs were very new bits, definitely not up to Kylo’s level. And ‘understand that this is a high-stakes event and consequences will be enforced’ is Kylo-speak for ‘If I twink-murder your PC, they’re dead. Boo-hoo, so sad, cry, little baby, cry.’
All this built up such a mass of hard feelings that cross-faction RP between the two military factions essentially died. Nobody in the Resistance felt they could trust the First Order leadership (for good reason), and I don’t doubt Kylo claimed the Resistance plotrunners were as twinky and dishonest as he was, simply because they wouldn’t let him run roughshod over their PCs.
The three of them pissed in the well, early and often, and now they’re amazed that nobody’s drinking out of it. But that goes along with all their other brilliant decisions.
