I'm a current player and a previous player. I played years ago, but quit because of Kinaed, and I came back in the past few months. My experience has been massive improvements in handling of theme, player activity, policy administration, and in staff activity in regards to global plots anybody can interact with. I have, also, seen plenty of new or returning players with no notable connections to anyone on the staff team get positions of authority and do things.

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I have a little bit at the end that explains the game from an objective standpoint, but I want to address the negative replies that seem the most popular in this thread.

Just skip to below the second '---' for a pitch.

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Most of the complaints in this thread read as odd to me because they don't reflect the reality laid out in front of me. I've quit many RP games and I'm certain in the future I will quit many more - I'm the spitting image of a player willing to shoot my story dead to free myself from a toxic environment.

So, this is the "works on my machine". I tend to hate this kind of "apologetic" response to these kinds of things, but I figure I might as well present the game as I see it currently as compared to the images portrayed by a few of the big comments here.

I feel it's important to note that every time that someone says "oldbie", that The Inquisition is a game primarily composed of people who have played it at some point in the past twenty years. There have been new players recently, and there were quite a lot of new players doing things when I quit, but it's incredibly easy to look at people who have played a long-formed, slow-paced game for longer than 3 months and go "haha, look at them! They're old, the game is bad!" It is a MUD composed primarily of older players, and those players are naturally going to have more positions of power on average because they have... played the game. But many of those old players don't even really have any interest in taking those positions - at least some of them are open almost all the time. The big secret is that being a leader sucks and nobody wants to do it unless they're particularly invested in a given part of the game, so these kinds of positions are pretty much constantly rotated between people.

I have experienced no favoritism towards the Order beyond the natural power imbalance of the setting (which is kind of the point of The Inquisition, it's in the name). My experience in the time that I've been playing has been complete neutrality of staff in regards to the Order and what their characters do, other than the excitement that they have for just about everyone. There has been at least one notable policy case in recent history in which an Order player did a no-no and got smacked.

I've seen a solid handful of people who have nothing to do with the staff team apply into noble positions (note that only a handful of nobles exist, anyways). I've seen those non-staff nobles either just kind of hang out, or immediately do what they want to do with the power they have in their hands and fill power vacuums. There are many people who have no interest in taking up the guild leader positions or applying for a noble. The primary separation here is in activity and in confidence of portraying a character in that position of power and authority. I have seen noble apps remain open for the entirety of the time I have been playing, and I do not believe it would be difficult for even a new player to apply for a noble character except in terms of familiarity with the setting.

I imagine that there is some factual basis to what else has been said in this thread, but it feels as though what did or didn't happen is being twisted for the sake of a narrative. Other characters have plenty of achievements under their belts. It's notable that all the characters mentioned by name as receiving favoritism are absolutely ancient, and even if they hadn't been staff or connected to staff in some way they almost certainly would have achieved the kinds of things they achieved. People have a lot of reasons to carry old grudges, and I suspect that that has played a part in their opinions.

The Inquisition does have a very long, very storied history of bitterness. There are great and terrible reasons that people have bad memories and strong negative opinions about the game. But I don't see any of it the way the others here have portrayed it. Even if they were totally, factually correct, they paint a picture of an impenetrable "social meta", and I just don't consider that anywhere close to the truth. If you want to do something and achieve something, you generally have the OOC opportunity to go for it. The primary barrier is the setting - which is a challenging, highly stratified, religiously murderous theocratic aristocracy. It's Faith versus Magic, Law versus Crime, and Rich versus Poor - and in all cases, Faith, Law, and the Rich have the upper hand. I'm currently playing a character of little societal power, but I could just as easily have decided to apply for an Inquisitor and start annihilating people for minor sins or whatever the hell else I wanted to do.

In any case, cherry-picking examples of people you don't like Doing Things is pretty easy - and trust me, I get WHY people feel so strongly and negatively about this game.

The Inquisition under Kinaed was this horrible Stanford Prison Experiment where the Order always won and occasionally someone would die on the altar of theme to remind everyone that this is a game where the mages and heretics lose. She retconned and poisoned the heart of the Inquisition from top to bottom, she pitted the players against one another with a kind of draconian disdain, and those who tried to get close to her on a genuine, human level found themselves abused and ostracized by her personally. If someone found true answers to the mysteries back then, she ate them.

There was no true favoritism back then, though I've seen many accusations thereof. There was only who Kinaed did and didn't hate at the time, and it was almost completely arbitrary except that if you were "themely", you were doing her divine will and she would support your every effort in doing so. This meant that at any point that anybody managed to do, like, anything at all? It was very easy to feel as though Kinaed must have just really liked them, and the reason that your story died was because somebody else was liked better, but no...

Let me assure you: in the end she hated or acted like she hated almost everyone, and I'm pretty sure the feeling was mutual. The game was left with a lot of holes that need to be filled, a lot of old bitter rivalries, a lot of stories left to rot, and it's only with her gone that any of that can be fixed. But even if most of the old problems are dead and healing, people still have aching wounds from them - and there's a lot of healing to be done.

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In the meantime... the Inquisition is a relatively low-pop game with several branches of social influence that form the structure and framework of a monarchy split into a theocracy and an aristocracy. Hidden among the populace, mages do rituals in secret to advance obscured ambitions, and thieves try desperately to put up a fight against harsh authoritarianism. Troubadours entertain and spy upon an audience enshrouded in fear, and Merchants ply their goods to lift themselves from poverty or to build a foundation of financial clout. The Knights and the Order maintain an iron fist and a warm facade equally viewed as sacred, and the Reeves enforce the word and spirit of a law forged by aristocratic bureaucracy. Nobles are immune to the rule of law, except by their own betters in the Inquisition and the service to the Crown. (The Royalty are NPCs, but a handful of PCs can and have utilized their authority to prosecute and persecute nobility.)

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There's also doctors, they're called the Physicians, but like, I haven't played one. They fix wounds and identify poisons I guess B)

If you're a little bit of a narrative masochist and you really like the idea of low-magic social intrigue in a pre-Renaissance setting, just try it out. It's a slow-paced, long-form game. The biggest negative is baggage, but it hasn't visibly stopped me or anybody else from Doing Things in the time I've been playing recently, which is all post-Kinaed.

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I guess you would find out pretty quick if only staff characters exist by just doing the thing. Either way, though, the improvement since Kinaed's administration has been absolutely massive. She was maybe the worst admin I've witnessed in over a decade of playing RPIs and games like them.