Riot Pop
More Meaningful/Realistic Approach to Gatherings?

I have to agree with the underlying sentiment here, it seems a lot of extended effort can be made for things to fizzle out. This in turn can lead to people not trying this sort of thing again and burning out. The biggest RP story lines by vote was Mix vs Corp RP, and there should be more support for this specific detail.

My thoughts on this is the idea of a 'Riot zone' if certain criteria are met, long term RP, player count, event organised and so on and is carried out to a satisfactory manner a 'Riot zone' is established.

A riot zone would be an area (A room or two) in a non-intrusive (or intrusive area) that would be temporary with a time out or can be dealt with through certain criteria being met, rounding up PC ring leaders, depleting 'trouble makers'. The Riot zone, would spawn combat NPC's, similar to 'trouble makers' that would go into combat with corporate citizens (in this example) that hung around to long.

The idea is to have a tangible notable thing that needs to be dealt with, is somewhat automated, is avoidable if you do not wish to interact mechanically (you can just move around the marked off police area by going the long way around). It gives a multitude of topside players something to deal with that is overtly obvious as to what the problem is and what needs to be done. It could spawn a lot of RP too, 'what did you do during the riot' 'WJF just slaughter hundreds of Mixers' 'Man NLM corpsec actually handed out water and managed to calm a lot of people with a projector showing the juicy Vee show, and JUICY VEE EVEN TURNED UP.. the corpos are ok in my book' 'VS dropped a new riot dispersion agent and mutated a load of mixers what the fuck'

If the mechanics are good enough this could be used to just pop up a riot when ever, for what ever reason. The Mix is a powderkeg with a lighter held to it 24/7 the fact that there is not almost constant go getters rioting of the millions of population has always sort of confused me.

This is just me spewing my brain without tea this morning, so take from my ramblings what you will, but personally I am sort of stoked for something like this, hope others are.

There are a few old posts about rioting. I'll add them as I find them.

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/development-discussion/script-development/food-riot-48/

I agree that riots and large scale disturbances would add an element to the game that is currently lacking.

I like @fopsy's idea of a "riot zone". If it possible to have a token / NPC automatically attack "corporate" characters and tokens, that would go a long way towards giving the riot zone weight.

As for mechanisms for creating a riot zone, I believe that introducing the traditional CP2020 mechanic of allowing performers to create crowds would be an amazing addition to the game.

I detailed those thoughts earlier this year on the topic about incentivizing Mix performers.

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/ideas/incentivizing-mix-performers-2733/

The only thing I would add is that this mechanic would encourage performers to stay in the Mix. It would create a real Mix / Corporate divide for performers. As it is, it seems like "all" performers who last for any length of time end up employed by NLM.

There are so many ways that the Mix and its criminal elements could reward a performer for creating riot zones.

The other topic that @0x1mm and others brought up is how the riots seem to fizzle out and not have much impact.

There should be a mechanic where a riot in or near a store "unlocks" the shelves. Or maybe unlocks the shelves for characters who kicked off the riot. Just like certain actions gives characters in the vicinity stat and skill buffs, a riot action could tag characters for a limited duration. That would incentivize characters to start the riot, and not just coast on the coattails of others.

One of the biggest hurdles to having a culture of riots and the sense of the Mix being a powder keg ready to explode at any moment is the current culture of SIC. There is one organization whose role it is to suppress dissent. From what I've seen is that not only does that one organization do it very well, it is an easy opportunity for others to dog pile on.

There are measurable ICly consequences for talking about certain subjects, like large scale dissent, on SIC. The risks outweigh the rewards. Other than the occasional ganger who wants to build some rep, very few characters consistently spout of anti-corporate sentiment.

This is something that needs staff intervention. If corporate employees were met with a chorus of "Shut up. Get back to work corpie." every time they decided to play SIC gangster and dog pile on someone espousing anti-corporate ideas on SIC, things might change. If corporate employees were reported to HR for "wasting time" engaging with the SIC network instead of "working", things might change.

As things currently stand, it feels like the general attitude of staff and corporate characters is one of, "Let's keep the boot firmly on the neck of the Mix." instead of, "We should tread carefully because we're one vatted Mixer away from a large scale riot that shuts down ViriiSoma plaza."

FWIW - I can see things from both sides. CorpSec is supposed to keep Mixers oppressed and too scared to oppose them. Mixers are supposed to be so desperate that they'd rather die trying to get ahead than live another second being oppressed.

Right now, Mixers don't have anything to gain by rioting. They aren't going to get any gear out of it. Between corpsec and the WJF, the Corporate side of the divide is always going to prevail.