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The Purge
Extreme population control measures

In year 2105 the Withmore City Inc. consortium realizes that the physical space of Withmore City has become too small for their population of 80,000,000 million inhabitants. While citing it as a "catharsis" and "decompression" method for the citizens the morbid secret the city conceals, it is simply a population control method where the poor and homeless people are eliminated.

During the purge, which lasts from 7 PM to 7 AM one day per year, all services including 911, Judges, TERRA, and WCS stop working.

tl;dr: rampage, but IC, without the meta shit.

Yes, but only after heavy weapons are added.
There were so many ideas in the "joke" idea thread that I thought were legitimately excellent and this was one of them.

It fits the setting in a way, and gives a section of players a way to try things out they may not have otherwise, and makes people be creative with how they're going to ride it out.

I suppose the worst case scenario is it ends up like ebola outbreaks with everyone locked inside, but could still be fun to try.

NPCs are probably the biggest issue to overcome, would probably need a lot of staff for it.

Oh, as an addition. Make it based on the 'population' of the city. When the number reaches a certain amount, it's purge day.
Two questions - would chars get a HUGE amount of UE to use during the Purge, that disappears afterwards? If a character dies or perms out during the Purge, is it permanent?
The Purge in theory would be a 100% IC event.
I think everyone would hide inside.
And miss out on the chance to use a flamethrower on gold? pathetic.
I'm against anymore 'hide inside and wait for it to pass' events. I also think that the premise is just silly, an unneeded pop culture reference.

How easy is it to perm characters during this? No judges, no risk to attacking someone who wakes up in genetek.

What does this add to roleplay, realistically? Nothing. Hey, there's going to be all-out murder and destruction soon! Great. That's how it is in the mix every day, generally. It would make corporate characters just hide safely inside while their respective security teams mows down swathes of mixers (if the corporations were dumb enough to not just have lockdown procedures that would render their buildings impervious), no RP will really be had, just pure senseless combat and loot grabbing.

The only thing that would be purged are non-combat chars, and the top dogs just go around fragging everyone and looting corpses. It seems really unfair, especially if it's an IC situation that wouldn't be revoked after purge happened.
Not just non-combat characters, but especially those that play less frequently or are new and so they don't realize it is happening.

And then presumably every death is basically a perm, since there would inevitably be a cadre outside Genetek for shits and giggles.

This is what the Mix is anyways. No thanks.
I think some kind of 'purge' plot could be a fun idea. But I think that the idea of shutting down WJF/WCS makes no sense.

If the city wanted to purge then they would only want mixers to die. Not topsiders. So they would keep the WJF and WCS active as WJF protects topsiders and not mixers and WCS protects nobody (at least directly). TERRA being shut down would have, realistically, little impact outside of the ambient side of things which is still cool (imagine hearing that TERRA went on strike one day and that 500,000 more mixers died then on other days).

If a city mandated IC purge was to happen I imagine it would more likely be the Council paying relevant corps (like VS) to just distribute chemicals throughout the mix that was crafted to kill off 10% of the population or something.

I think a purge event that just gasses mixers would be, again, another event where people stay inside for hours, effectively murdering RP.
Not at all saying that such an event should happen or that it should even directly target PCs. Just laying out how I would see the city realistically purging the population.

If I was a GM and wanted to run this I would probably just do it as 99% ambiance. News reports about the decision. Footage of areos flying over the mix spraying misty clouds of gas. Pictures of dead mixers. Maybe target a couple of well off PCs who are good sports to get gassed and die for effect. Nothing more.

I agree that hide in your pad events tend to be my least favorite. But a big city-wide story like this, even if mostly ambient, is great fun for a lot of players. It gets them talking. Gives the motivation to go and do bold things. It is fun and can encourage RP. I think that more than a few would be fine with hiding in their pad for a day if they get some fun story to play with after.

I like the idea but thematically it makes no sense.

What would make sense is an IC plot where the WJF is taken out of the equation, Mix revolutionaries storm Gold and Green and the corporations have to fend for themselves for a day or two. Total anarchy in other words.

And actual sponsored Purge event would be strictly kept to Red, like Grey0 said. That's the area that needs depopulating. I could picture it being done as an NLM broadcasted event where gangs rigged up with cortex bombs are forced to go on a rampage against the sector (and each other) for a huge chyen prize.

Yeah. The VS path was just one obvious example. Could also be an NLM entertainment show. SK chromed out Population Enforcers. Genetek policy changes are dirtily deleting mixer clone records. NeoTrans offering free cruises (that only mixers ever seem to win) that nobody comes back from. WJF doing 'training exercises' that involves them in the mix just killing swaths of mixers.. So many possible ways. :P

I don't know what the benefit of this is?
Pavane, batko: so do the ebola events, risk adverse people have stayed inside around big city events and even during gang brawls for years. Hell, even when a max ue PC/NPC causing a mess they stay inside. There used to be a mixer PC who made corpies in GREEN!! stay inside when they were active. We should not use that as a measure to say, hey we will add this or not.

Pavane: tough shit, this is Sindome, immies and oldbies need to get permed now and then.

Crooknose: great idea, any twist to make it ICly viable is good.

Wonderland: it's epic? Big city wide plot with combat mayhem anarchy and massive death? What's not to like about it?

There are people who build combat centered PCs who would be unstoppable.
It feels like the junk food of conflict. Killing for the sake of it isn't why many people play this game, and anyone who'd be worth making a point of killing, you can kill anyway. This just removes some consequences, which is... an important part of theme. At least to my mind.
There's a huge misconception about how "unstoppable" most combat focused PCs are, so I'm just gonna say I don't think that'd be so much of a problem in this scenario. As with anything else on Sindome, you risk joining in on the chaos knowing that you could be destroyed in an instant. Nobody would be forcing you to go out there.
All the people saying "this is already The Mix all the time".

As a matter of theme, kinda-sorta.

As a matter of actual gameplay experience... You're either projecting a couple of events you've experienced onto all Mix players every day, or, you just do not know.

Because it's both - Red is red in tooth and claw, themefully, but, the reason more-than-half of our players are rolling Mixers isn't because they're always losing to murderhobos. We RP the struggle, we don't just grind out loot wins.

I get it, some people don't like RED. Some people don't like violence. Some people don't like struggle of any sort whatsoever. I'm not defending this @idea, I'm not too great a fan of it. But the reactions to it are silly, uninformed, and possibly in bad faith.

I am sometimes the one most critical of Sindome gameplay turning into something like Call of Duty, but as unintuitive as it may first appear, I do think there are some real social positives that could be gained from an event like this. I think it's worth thinking about as a thought experiment at least, to consider how law and order is enforced in the game and how that effects what players are willing to do.

I'm not going to die on a hill for it, but I do think there's more merit here than it just being murderhobo ebola. It also doesn't have to be literally The Purge, a huge terrorist attack that takes the Hall offline for 12-24 hours would accomplish the same effect with a different premise. It doesn't have to be some legal amnesty, it could be handwaved as there being too much chaos to deal with crimes in the immediate wake.

I think the rule-enforcing and authority-enforcing mechanisms and organizations have the perception of having grown very strong over time IC, and players often avoid gameplay that involves them even when its completely viable. It could be useful to let players just get out and try stuff and that might carry over afterwards into people being more bold about what they attempt topside.

Murderhoboing is still not not okay OOC and there is definitely (as seen in this thread) a perception that veteran or high UE characters would be just killing everyone if the WJF and TERRA didn't exist, which isn't true at all.

No one would get permed unless they severely misunderstood how cloning out works and how characters can be permed. It might be a good way for the player base to learn they may not be as vulnerable as they imagine. There's also nothing to say that Genetek must be left entirely undefended during the event.

This is my subjective opinion but I think law and order and crime enforcement have become far too ingrained and ever-present in Withmore, and some kind of big shake up to put some more chaos and crime into the player base could be a good thing.

a huge terrorist attack [...or something...] that takes the Hall offline for 12-24 hours would accomplish the same effect with a different premise. It doesn't have to be some legal amnesty, it could be handwaved as there being too much chaos to deal with crimes in the immediate wake.

I'll just point out that this is something PCs can do all by themselves. Sure, it's a Big Plot(tm), but what are we even here for at all.

I think the rule-enforcing and authority-enforcing mechanisms and organizations have the perception of having grown very strong over time IC, and players often avoid gameplay that involves them even when its completely viable. It could be useful to let players just get out and try stuff and that might carry over afterwards into people being more bold about what they attempt topside.

Totally. It's been done. Again, 100% from the player side.

@0x1mm

My experience is that consequences are about memories, not power -- both the memories of PCs and of NPCs. People experiences consequences (and I'm not saying that's a bad thing) because someone follows up hours or days later, whether or not it is a judge or a vengeful corpsec or mixer hitter. I don't think that an IC event that just delays those consequences will change any potential chilling effect the risk of consequences have.

If the fear articulated is that no one is willing to attack NLM because the judges or NSEC will investigate, I don't think an IC event where people are busy on Wednesday will stop them from enforcing consequences Thursday. I'm also not sure in fact that this happens -- people pull topside capers all the time, despite the consequences.

This is my subjective opinion but I think law and order and crime enforcement have become far too ingrained and ever-present in Withmore, and some kind of big shake up to put some more chaos and crime into the player base could be a good thing.

Agree with this all the way. It's gotten to the point where the reward to even attempt anything topside is near non-existent and anytime someone does something it's up there it is purely to progress plot, knowing that recovering after the event will be a pain. Corpies hitting Red has consequences, but mixers hitting topside has consequences perpetually.

In the mix it can take several hours to properly line up an ambush on a target, which just isn't possible topside because a GM has to be with you every step of the way. In addition, to pile another reason on top of what I said about effort and reward earlier, bounties on corporate citizens are usually incredibly disproportionate to risk involved.

And yes, while it it is themely for the Orwellian boot to a mixer's face to be ever present, from a gameplay perspective it's boring. I say yes to any events that could even things out, though even that is a poor substitute for making hits on corpies something a mixer solo is interested in all the time.

@Necronex666

"In the mix it can take several hours to properly line up an ambush on a target, which just isn't possible topside because a GM has to be with you every step of the way. In addition, to pile another reason on top of what I said about effort and reward earlier, bounties on corporate citizens are usually incredibly disproportionate to risk involved."

This is an issue, though not for this thread. Being able to have violent crime be 'approved' rather than 'monitored' would make crime a lot easier on Gold logistically -- because honestly, what crime ISN'T violent when you get right down to it?

Yeah, Pavane.

Not gonna go much deeper into it here but I couldn't resist touching on it briefly. Agreed on what you suggested though.

This is my subjective opinion but I think law and order and crime enforcement have become far too ingrained and ever-present in Withmore, and some kind of big shake up to put some more chaos and crime into the player base could be a good thing.

The reality is these shake-ups and purge type events folks are looking for have proponents pushing them in-game. Just because you see what you ostensibly believe to be solely GM driven - players are pushing these things. I recommend that instead of griping about it OOC - you pursue these things IC.

There's a lot of awesome possibilities out there and 99% of the time I see players holding them back. Not code or mechanics.

I recommend that instead of griping about it OOC - you pursue these things IC.

I am doing that, despite being in a position IC totally unsuited to that aim and one that is worse off for it. There's nothing wrong with discussing ideas on the forums, it's not griping. It's discussion.

I think the gates being flung open and the guards being sent home for a day isn't the solution that people really want in the long term.

There really needs to be some give and take from both sides. I've seen a lot of crimes when the people that -could- respond aren't even (seemingly) logged in. It's been a major gripe of mine that people will only do certain acts if they feel they have a 100% chance of getting away, or if it's something so trivial that there's no real consequences for anyone involved.

I'm sure that setting a bomb off and running away when no one was around was exciting for -you-, but we're the hooks for further RP? You did everything to get away clean... Now what?

This is entirely coupled with the awareness of how hard it is to commit crimes, the mental gravity to "optimize" everything, and how you're not obligated to just hand the opposition a calling card or a win. But if people are committed to the idea of committing crimes topside, then that give and take needs to be present, instead of leaving some people with fire damage to clean up, no suspects, and just shrugging.

Obviously, there's more to this systemic issue and I could write an essay, but I can say that Reefer is very much on point that getting involved with the plots already present is a far more productive way of achieving the dream.

Also, the idea of pulling the plot of a movie wholesale doesn't sit well with me, but I understand the intent here.

Again speaking as someone who has yet to put a point in dodge or an attack skill so take it with a grain of salt.

But being how the game is a long term game, and even if I split dodge/brawling(whatever attack skill) 100% and agility and strength say, I still don't think I can kill single NPC in the mix let alone a player.

I read on the forums that the gangers are made to be badass near unkillable guys for newbs, so while I think this would be cool to allow folks some combat experience, I don't think it tracks with the general theme of "You're nothing till you've been here a while and UE pumped your homie up."

So this would be only something that really oldbies could participate in that wouldn't be just throwing away your life.

Now I've also seen hinted that multi-person attack bonuses can turn the tide on even an advanced fighter, but then you gotta go get your immy gang gang going and try to find the opportunity and place to flex your limited muscle.

So to me, while I'm not against the kill or be killed mentality, it seems like you'd be asking everyone who isn't a combat monster to just be okay with being killed if they choose to walk around during this type of event.

I don't want to derail from the point of villa's thread and so encourage discussion about crime be split off elsewhere, but I will say: bad planning doesn't mean it's non-existent to commit crime topside without getting caught. Plan better.
@HolyChrome.

Mixers try their best to get away clean from topside crimes because if they're caught, because they live in the mix, they are at risk forever. They have to bend, or break if they refuse to do so. There's a difference between the average amateur solo not wanting to leave any evidence behind and not being able to do so when theme is that the corporates must always win.

If this were changed and someone were fragged once and left alone over something then I could see an argument being made for them to stop being so perfectly elusive. Until then, nobody sane is going to risk themselves to a lifelong torture plot.

Slightly off topic Volo but I wanted to respond anyways to help dispel some misinformation:

Thanks to the curve an eight month character really isn't that far behind a max UE old character in their specialty.

NPC gangers aren't really all that crazy strong - it depends on your character's focus and all that. It's their numbers that really give them an edge.

You can be here long enough to get to max UE but you still won't be worth much if you haven't gotten out there and done stuff along the way. Contacts and experience mean a LOT.

Teamwork is a huge help but it is hard to ordinate. Still, I've seen connections accomplish more than UE more often than not. Just need to be creative.

Like I said, Necro, I'm entirely aware of the why. Except again, where are the RP hooks? Many of these situations leave the respective authorities with nothing to do in regards of investigation. How is that fun for them?

Again, I get it. I've been on both sides. I'm saying the game isn't a subjective crime simulator and it's about the RP. Both sides need more elbow room to achieve the back and forth that doesn't end in either being pasted and left empty-handed.

I don't think it tracks with the general theme of "You're nothing till you've been here a while and UE pumped your homie up."

That's not the general theme. Your specific skills and coded achievement outcomes might depend on UE, but don't give people the idea that their RP means nothing until they've been here a while.

Also, there's plenty of people who commit crimes, get dosed punishment from an authority, and are left alone. The idea that they're in for a permanent hellride is another misconception.
HolyChrome:

It needs to go both ways in my opinion. Yes, it would be awesome for a mixer criminal to leave hooks. get caught. Provide that RP for corporate PCs. But that isn't likely to happen until corporate PCs demonstrate they can take that and make it into a fun RP experience for both parties and not just have it be a scene where the mixer criminal gets slapped down.

Red is basically in this lawless state as it is most of the time, and there's plenty of events like this that are fairly chaotic where people of all sorts can (and do) participate. As it stands there's nothing really stopping the rich and powerful from going "human hunting in trash town". Some are planned and scheduled, others just sort of suddenly happen, but they keep things fresh and exciting.

I'd rather see the existing IC group that advocates a similar depopulation goal be actively supported by PCs and see how that plays out.

Entirely agree, Grey0.

Another gripe of mine is that corporations don't necessarily have the same toolkit of punishment as the WJF (Fines, TiDi, Behavioral Chips, Banishment) to potentially make things more interesting or even dish out a lighter punishment. Yes, it's an onus on corporate types to get creative with their retribution, but it might help if there were more options besides just killing someone or beating them up.

I know this is not a full excuse for them, but it's certainly a contributing factor.

nobody sane is going to risk themselves to a lifelong torture plot.

Used to be, nothing in Sindome was forever. Obviously a reputation is going to stick and last, but, GMs and players used to make sure that consequences didn't prevent people from changing RP directions after an OOCly reasonable amount of time. Somtimes it takes some GM plot or handwaving, sometimes all it takes is for people to be willing to be cooperative while we compete.

What changed?

One thing is, population - we now have 6x the number of daily active players that we did when, for example, PC X got Consequence Y and burned Bridge Z, but then later RPd their way into something which rebuilt that burned bridge.

Another thing is, culture. We've got scores of new players who have only ever had set for them the example that consequences are due, and never been shown the ways in which characters can, well, not be "redeemed", but, break through obstacles in order to experience RP avenues which were closed for a while. This is Sindome and those come with their own risks, so, it's not like people got away with something.

That is a good and reasonable point. I experienced the same from another angle. Aside from providing PCs with more ways to 'punish' others than beat down and kill, I think the main fix here is being willing to RP and compromise. Let that corpie demand one favor from you in the future and take the threat seriously for example.

While I wholeheartedly agree with your point Grey0 - I just want to mention that optically you will rarely see these consequences as "fun experience".

Most people don't like to lose and by the time they face it - RP quickly de-escalates to spitting and yelling. At the same time, even if there is a compromise - it is in both party's best interests to not display that openly.

I think the reality is that there's a lot of what you folks are asking for happening already. Unfortunately, the optics of it all is terrifying ICly and in turn, people are scared to take action IC. It's all very themely but something keep in mind.

Very much agree on the threat side. When the one button in a side's arsenal is in whatever variation, it becomes a devalued currency. It's a frustrating thing for me throughout the game as a whole, I've been entirely guilty of it, but I'm still left staring at that one button from time to time.

I will say that the people who are in positions of authority (Mix and Topside) get higher by their ability to transcend this and provide RP, so if you are someone interested in doing crimes, then lean into that give and take with them, and you'll generally always see a return.

But if you want to play a hardass who never compromises ever, then you'll see the same given. That's again for both sides.

Also, "revenge is a dish best served cold" is never truer than on SD. If you think you've been targeted by this mentality of a 'permanent punishment' deal, ask yourself if you've laid low long enough to continue the conflict. If you just start back up again right after being slapped, then yeah... The other person's going to respond.

Forum code at a bit of my post:

When the one button in a side's arsenal is 'attack x' in whatever variation*

Sorry, not sorry?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-7NDP8V-6A

The targeted people of a Purge would be the homeless, dying, struggling, low-UE general populace. So how about this idea for an event?

1- Dozens of NPC weakling vagrants are scattered throughout Red, Gold, and Green. Maybe flavorfully their SIC releases a constant beeping sound, which indicates that this person has been "randomly" selected to be purged.

2- It becomes legal to kill / grapple / whatever these NPCs, and they're pathetically easy to do so. Players can place corpses in a depository chute outside WCS on Gold. Dumped bodies on Gold could be worth 1 point, Red 2 points, and Green 3 points, based on difficulty to chute & scarcity.

3- Heaviest purgers get a reward at the end. Instead of King of the Mix, you could call it Prince of the Purge.

Entirely missing the point.

'The Purge' is an anti-capitalist narrative about the masses uprising and taking power from the powerful on a tiny, time-limited scale. Afterwards, oppressive life as usual resumes for the downtrodden masses.

The goal isn't to go around murdering everyone. It's for the have-nots to have a holiday where they get to live out 'retributive justice' against the haves.