Prophesy of Pendor : Aftermath
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An RPG detailing the aftermath of the events of PoP3 and the events before PoP4
 
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 Manifest Destiny (Discussion)

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Isabel Tenorio
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Isabel Tenorio
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyWed Aug 22, 2012 6:27 am

The duration of the mini-events has certainly been an issue.


As to this increasing the GM workload: The majority of actions are already listed, escort, quest, intimidate, etc. These are not things that will require GM consideration. Players should be otherwise occupied with the GM created events. However, the goal should never be to limit our RP. When players are not otherwise occupied, they might, with GM approval, enact their own plots. At that point the GMs would get involved with player-initiated events instead of ones of their own creation.

Currently there is no room for RP to impact the metagame, as it's more about the buildings than anything else. The investment required to launch a campaign to steal a hex is simply too much for an Order to consider when they could instead build up their own buildings. That's why we eliminate the buildings. We still leave recruitment with obvious limits so we don't have players bringing in troops through magic. We maintain the idea of the metagame as a way to track progress and facilitate some of the potential tedious actions. We scrap the economic ideas that ultimate have more impact than the wise use of troops or good decisions in RP.

We aren't adding more things for the GMs to debate, we're just making the impact of those decisions worth more than the math game we have now.
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Iskar
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyWed Aug 22, 2012 6:43 am

Restricting the meta game to five or six actions would a) make it even more boring than you might deem it now and b) not work because players will come up with their own plans. These plans need to be evaluated and the players involved wiill start arguing about the effects, eventually creating bad blood.
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Isabel Tenorio
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyWed Aug 22, 2012 1:57 pm

I have to dispute this point of how an influence-only game couldn't possibly work, I'll leave the idea of the current metagame being boring or not to an unpersuadable personal opinion. At any point in the RP someone could have come up with their own plan not represented in the metagame, yet we haven't had much of a problem with that (a few incidents of 10,000 cavalry produced from one's rear aside). At any point people could have attempted to build a custom building, or tried to create something like gunpowder from their RPs. Sure, some dumb ideas have been proposed, like my thought of using the Dawn's fleet to pirate ships from the Vanskerry and thus create a super navy without actually paying for it. They can be shot down on the grounds that we need to keep a level playing field while still allowing for creativity in a given scene or plot. There is a balance to be found in free-form vs hard rules.

The point of this should be not to win a fake game at all costs, to play that way means we've already failed as we're still making this up as we go. The point is to select our characters, affiliate them with an Order, and play those characters with and against the characters of another Order. Hopefully we'll create some good lore or at least inspiration for PoP4... if nothing else, we have fun with cooperative storytelling (it's cooperative even when our characters are defeated!). If we're just arguing for whatever result benefits our Order most, we're not going to have good RP at any point.

As much as I love the brilliant creativity we could be allowed, we all know that we have to have some limits. The responsibility of the GMs is to reasonably decide on those limits and then enforce them. Sometimes people take it personally when their ideas are determined to be likely failures, unfair, or simply terrible. That's why RP works much better when we try to play from our characters perspective rather than injecting an idealized version of ourselves into a different world. Of course, we still have to communicate OOCly to make this run smoothly, and to share knowledge that our characters would have just from living in a medieval world.

Your fear is that someone will come up with a plot to assassinate the Lord of Windholm and attempt to replace him with his half-wit twin brother that can be easily manipulated thus subverting all the normal influence methods. Okay, that is an extreme example, but we can still reject them as being outside of the scope of reasonable freedom in the RP. For the influence actions, we just stick to the ones we have. It's just like for recruitment now, Aranor cannot round up all of his Knights and take a few villages as conscripts thus gaining a free 500 Militia. The same applies to other aspects of the Metagame, both revamped and the original.

During an event, a GM-run plot, there should be room for player impact. If during the course of the Dawn mini-event, Aranor had made the decision to simply kill everyone encountered, that ought to reduce influence. The argument could be made that such is intimidation of course, but if it is not RPed in such a way that it would make the population of a hex more generous towards the Order, or at least more compliant, then it is a reduction of influence proportionate to the troops involved. We may haggle over this, sure, but as long as we're all playing in good faith we don't have to fear drama. If someone ceases to be involved in this project in good faith, there will be drama as inevitably they won't be able to get their way.
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Laisha
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyWed Aug 22, 2012 4:06 pm

Hm...interesting.

Honestly, observing this conversation about the metagame, all I can think is that the current rules are indeed too limiting, preventing us from thinking outside of the box. While I certainly understand your concerns about GM latitude and a level playing field, Iskar...sometimes I think that giving the GMs a little more flexibility would be a good thing. Right now, rules encourage players to act inside the box and prevent GMs from reacting organically, instead reacting using a premade list of reactions and possibilities.

Part of what makes role-playing as we are fun, though, is when players and GMs can develop more a natural back and forth dynamic. Say, for example, the Silvermist want to build a watchtower in Hex 50 (I don't know who owns it, I can't see the maps right now, just work with me hypothetically). As it stands now, it's just this automatic, robotic kind of thing. It either succeeds or fails. That's totally uninteresting. There are questions to ask before building it: What purpose does that tower serve (ie. why are we building it in the first place, general security or a direct threat)? Who will be manning it, rangers, local militia or the local lord's men? What will it be built from; does it need to be a sturdy stone structure in case a rogue Jatu warband decides to come riding out of the hills or is it just to protect against simple bandits? Three questions right there that are worth asking and that a simple economic system can't really answer.

With a GM instead of a system, he (or she) could determine whether it's a simple automatic affair or if there's greater complexity to it. Perhaps the lord disagrees with the idea of his own men manning the tower. Perhaps the tower will be built under duress due to constant raids. Or perhaps the area the tower is in needs to be cleared of bandits to begin with. Not saying these wouldn't be work for the GM, but they would be also fun. It's fun to come up with scenarios for players to react to and it seems less like work as a result. Right now, the metagame just seems like a bunch of work for the controlling GMs (Iskar and Aranor) rather than this fluid, organic arrangement in which players interact with and cope with their environment. Additionally, these tasks can be as simple or complex as the GMs want or need, depending on the demands of their lives. If they have more free time, they can make more complex metagame scenarios (albeit, not like the mini-events) and if not, they can just give simple explanations for success or failure and say "try again." Because, ultimately, in roleplaying, what the GM says, goes.

The other problem? The disconnect between the events and the metagame. Though I'm commanding it, I'm still seriously bothered by the army in the Legion event. It, like several other groups of reinforcements, kind of just cropped up spontaneously from the metagame and have been thrown at the Snake Cult, regardless of the logic of spontaneously sprouting an army merely because the metagame has progressed several seasons since the invasion began. Now, we can retcon some of these occurrences (like in the case of the army, it's been levied for a few weeks in preparation for the march south), but if the event and the metagame were moving in sync with each other, the army might not be there at all. I'm sure similar things have occurred in the other events. Unless we bring these things into sync, we're just going to keep having these disconnects of logic, reality and believability.
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Iskar
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyWed Aug 22, 2012 7:33 pm

The metagame is not a box but a foundation to develop your ideas on. Neither our palisades nor the dawns watchtowers were in the list of improvements. Having the list of basic build options allows us to easily implement new ideas in a fair way.
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Saeros
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyWed Aug 22, 2012 10:01 pm

Quote :
Neither our palisades nor the dawns watchtowers were in the list of improvements. Having the list of basic build options allows us to easily implement new ideas in a fair way.

Neither was naval warfare, our beer barrels or my research at Poinsbruk. Those were RPed actions which, after being discussed by the players, were implemented in the metagame (not created by it).

Unfortunately, I cannot contribute to this discussion. Metagame calculations are beyond me and I'll just keep quiet. I will only repeat the suggestion send to Mordred: suspend the metagame for a while, finish the events, then later come up with it again - as it is or with some changes.
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Slopsen
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyWed Aug 22, 2012 10:19 pm

Yer, suspend and finish the events then start it up again so everything syncs up, we've got the arena to keep us busy in the mean time.
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Laisha
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyThu Aug 23, 2012 3:00 am

Valid points to both of you.

I believe mine still stands though. I never said we couldn't think outside of the box or that we haven't; what I said (or implied, I suppose) is that it discourages it. When you create a solid set of rules like the metagame has, I know my mind at least, tries to think within those rules as much as possible for fear of violating them. That and...again, the metagame just removes the RP elements from order management. Instead of the grandmaster (or highly trusted underling number one ;P) issuing orders and giving reasons for a particular order, making it seem like the order is actually being run, we get these lists of orders that look far more like an accountant's spreadsheet. Lists which are devoid of roleplaying, humanizing elements, and transforming the orders into a group of nation-states (a point that Ana was originally trying to make, I believe).
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Saeros
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyThu Aug 23, 2012 5:06 am

At this point it should be obvious that I can't keep my mouth shut for too long...


Quote :
Instead of the grandmaster [...] issuing orders and giving reasons for a particular order [...] we get these lists of orders that look far more like an accountant's spreadsheet.
What if instead of accountant sheets we did monthly/biweekly meetings in the Clarion Hall (or equivalent)? The grandmaster would discuss the orders IC, assign them IC, and the underlings would respond to them IC. This seems much more realistic.
Evidently, for that to work, the metagame would have to be simplified. See below.

Further important point regarding excessive work:
I don't think everything must be RPed*. I believe we have people here roleplaying more than 5 characters simultaneously. This is very tiresome and unrealistic. If we avoided RPing anything besides our own characters, things would be kept simple AND we could focus on the development of this character (exception made for special cases, such as GMing). Plus, this would make us develop very good strategies for placing our few players in command of key events.

So instead of roleplaying character captain X in his war against the Jatu, why not just RP a strategy discussion with him in the War Room, and let him do his job on his own? In practice, that means that the mathematical results of that skirmish depend on what was discussed in the War Room - no one can control captain X's actions or oversee the battle, changing plans in the last minute (i.e. no need for creating GMed events for that). We get the results by GM reports, in the same way a king receives news of his battle orders by letters and messengers.

But if this battle is important to the order (say, an attack against a Gauntlet-controlled bridge), we might want put a player in it, which then would give us tactical flexibility and some control over the results (and which would then open up a micro-event for that action).

This means that we would have much more IC discussion and debate among the players and less wasted time detailing the actions of secondary characters. It would foster diplomacy. More importantly, as I mentioned before, is that we could really focus on character development. Focusing on the individual, I believe, would be a possible solution for this problem:
Quote :
Lists which are devoid of roleplaying, humanizing elements, and transforming the orders into a group of nation-states

*. Except in the style of Streets and Fields, where it's fun and don't make other people work more than they should with calculations etc.

Now I'll stay quiet.
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Iskar
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 4:34 am

PS: (actually AS, since it is in front ("ante") of what I wrote, but temporally it is after it so I stick with "post") I did not realise I created such a huge wall of text, so please do not be afraid of it. I hope I laid out everything clearly. (Maybe that is why I needed so many words...)

I have finally returned home and can thus answer more elaborately regarding the meta game:

1) The main complaint seems to be about orders acting as states-within-the-state, about commanding constructions, recruitment, etc. However, when we have a look at the orders making their appearance in European history, the most prominent ones like the knights Templar, the knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic knights held lands and titles of their own, commanded armies of sergeants of their own, developped an autonomous credit system (Templars) and had their very own independent state (Teutonic). The orders we play are their counterparts in Pendor, the most powerful orders of this land and therefore it would seem strange if we did not build up state-within-the-state-like structures.

2) Let us assume we simplify the metagame considerably. This would reduce the number of available actions, maybe even remove construction issues and the monetary management at all.

a) At first maybe we would get along with this fine, but soon people would come up with their own creative ideas, transcending the set of actions we introduced. This would require evaluation by the GMs in order to determine what effects these other actions would have. Sooner or later this would lead to arguments: (cum grano salis) "Why does his action have a stronger effect than mine whilst I spent more thought on it?", "This action would be useless because...", "Why does my action have this and not that effect? Did I not say clearly...", etc.
Arguing about the effects of not clearly defined actions means death to most RP and creates bad blood between the players. Therefore we will soon after that start fixing the effects of additional actions, again painfully trying to balance them to the old ones. If we abandon construction orders in the metagame people will sooner or later come up with customised, individual building projects to get an advantage and in the end we will just have another version of the current infosheet to put things on a solid foundation and prevent constant arguing. (Ask Azlanek about the effects of arguing in RP rounds, if you like.)
We would save us a lot of work and struggle by keeping the current set of rules.

b) If you have a look at all the discussions we had before the current system was introduced to the metagame, you will see we thought about a lot of ideas and decided they were not appropriate to our purposes. How would you regulate recruitment without training grounds capacities? If you allow training grounds, how many can you build and what are the costs? Do you require a certain amount of manhours, time measured in metagame turns? Some orders are by lore said to be especially wealthy and most produce resources in provinces of their own, where they have claimed lordship by right of occupation. Do you allow them to use their wealth? How do you keep track of their spendings and balance these assets without introducing budgets, prices and income? What does an order have to do to improve their equipment? How would you balance clever and stupid plans to achieve this?
Besides the difficulty to answer all these questions: If you don't use a system as we currently have, you need a lot more involvement by the GMs, rating the effectiveness and costs of each action, keeping track of a huge bunch of only losely defined numbers. Mordred is heavily busy with his own company, DD is occupied with work for the development of PoP 4 and his own live, Azlanek would certainly welcome a break from his taxing events and is not likely to take up a comparable workload again, Aranor has already enough to do doing the maths for the current system and I got myself to more than 1600 posts administrating this RP and metagame. Although I do greatly enjoy this RP and the metagame I do not really feel like doubling that post number by endlessly discussing unclear actions and their effects without a solid set of rules to back up my decisions.

c) If you reduce the metagame to some five or six actions and do not at all allow for individual and creative actions or solutions (thus rendering the above paragraphs a) and b) pointless) you completely discourage creative or long-term-thinking solutions to problems at all, crippling the possibilities of players whose characters are laid out to use strategy, diplomacy and wits more than micro-tactics or plainly brute strength, therefore depriving the whole RP of half its fun. To be honest, I would not want to play an RP where I cannot make proper use of creativity and clever strategy.

3) Another complaint is about the current system limiting actions too strongly, viewing the set of rules as a box confining the meta game to what is contained in it. While this would be true if we had very simple rules whose extension would require a lot more work (cf. 2a and 2b) and whose strict obedience would certainly limit actions heavily (cf. 2c), this is certainly not true for our current system. It is true, the current system does have a lot of rules; rules influencing each other, interacting and referring to each other. This is a stable and after several adjustmends we did in the past also a well balanced system. Since we have the current number of parameters (troops, income, resources, budget, standing with the people, defence value of holdings) it is very easy and in particular easily comparable and traceable to introduce effects of actions not named in the the rules set (be they constructions, troop orders or other projects) and reward orders for their creativity, let the roleplay directly influence the metagame (beyond huge projects like conquest or war) or take into account certain characteristics of the different orders according to the situation. All this requires only one GM at a time, looking at the action, choosing an appropriate parameter and modifying it as he sees fit. If the others dissent the mistake is easily corrected by using other values again.
The set of rules is not a cage for the roleplay, it is a foundation, providing you with some basic inspiration what to do, an as simplistic as possible and as detailed as necessary representation of a medieval country and its social, military and economic system and last but not least an easy way to introduce your own ideas to this without causing major discussions about their effects.

4) The current desynchronisation between events and metagame is not an issue of the metagame but of the slow flow of the events which turned out to get out of hand at a point of time where we could hardly call an end to them without disappointing most players (including us) by making a lot of excellent RP having been done in vain. As soon as the troops bound in the current events are free, orders will act more agressively and storylines caused by metagame actions such as raids, invasions, etc. will naturally move along the metagame more smoothly and have more links with it, therefore also giving some more flavour to the metagame which seems to be scourned as a dull and grey crunching of numbers.

5) I do, however, like the idea of anyway involving more members of the orders into the metagame. I suggest the following (based on an attempt the Dawn has made some time ago. Thanks for that Aranor!):
Each order needs to name one or several characters tasked with the general administration (budget, troops, general construction strategies). To balance large holdings against smaller ones we would take into account that more lands require more reports to be read, more lists to be checked and more letters to be sent. If an order has more than 6 provinces they need to have two members attending to this task (most likely grandmaster and second in command, though not necessarily). For orders with 6 or less provinces one administrating member is sufficient. The others will be tasked with enacting certain orders that the administrating member deems to be especially important and can roleplay about this in their chapterhouses (if it is a secret action) or in the streets and fields section, increasing chances of success and/or reducing the costs/casualties, depending what kind of action it is. This would enable us to engage the whole order in the metagame and entwine it more thoroughly with the actual RP.

Conclusion: You may start calling me Leibniz instead of Iskar, but (except for some minor changes, cf. 5)) I think the current system is the best of all possible systems.
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Isabel Tenorio
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 6:38 am

Iskar, I must ask you to please clarify your thoughts on creativity.

On one hand, you are claiming that without the current Metagame rules we would have people coming up with their own actions that the GMs must evaluate which cannot done. On the other you are claiming that the current Metagame does not limit our creativity, it just gives us a base.


I fail to see the distinction of evaluating actions with so many different kinds of resources, compared to the very simple: recruitment points in a hex modified by influence gives points for troops. Any creative action in the revamped system would have a cost associated with it. It is just as arbitrary on the part of the GMs as it is now. There is absolutely no difference, beyond that one is simple and one is complex. Either way the fact remains that in RP, the purpose of the GMs is to arbitrate our creativity. There are always disagreements, but if we're all trying to accomplish the same thing of 'Fun and good storytelling' as opposed to 'Fun by being the winner' then we'll turn out okay. If we're just trying to be the winner, we'll never accomplish good RP anyway.

---------------



Some food for thought based on the current Metagame orders (public ones, anyway.) We have things likes castle levels, craftsman, chapterhouses etc that boost the production modifier. We have things like training grounds, shrines, (and by mistake watchtowers) that provide troops. We have things like mines, roads and farms that provide income. Finally we have things that could actually enhance the RP, strategic things like boat builders, heretic cabals, master armorsmiths, etc. I included sheriffs in the latter.

I likely miscounted here and there, as many of the orders were mistakes that needed to be corrected. Additionally, I counted repeat orders that came about due to failures.


Dawn- Production: 9 Troops: 3 Income: 13 Strategic/Upgrade: 1 sheriff

Gauntlet: Production: 4 Troops: 1 Income: 8 Strategic/Upgrade: 0

Griffons: Production: 7 Troops: 1 Income: 4 Strategic: 0

Eventide: Production: 3 (slavemarket) Troops: 4 Income: 12 Strategic: 4 sheriff, 2 boatbuilder, 1 Heretic cabal

Legion: Production: 12 Troops: 7 Income: 11 Strategic:

Silvermist: Production: 14 Troops: 17 Income: 20 Strategic: 3 Sheriff

Special Actions: The Dawn had one, the Silvermist and the Legion engaged in the same one.


My conclusion from these numbers: The game is geared much, much more towards economic buildings than troops. Of the strategic buildings, the Eventide are the only ones to use something besides the sheriff (and a few watchtowers).

So I ask everyone: based on how the Metagame is going now, is it achieving the goals it should be?

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Iskar
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 7:44 am

Regarding the first point: It is much easier to add effects of additional actions in a balanced way in a system with many parameters because you metaphorically have more control knobs to do the fine tuning.

As for the second part and in general: Remember we are only 2 metagame years into the whole thing and 20 have been planned. It will be quite some time before PoP 4 gets out and this is only the start of the Aftermath action. Therefore it is only natural that we are in a phase of economic development. As soon as orders have built up their economy to a sufficient extent they will start investing in tactical and strategical assets. It somehow sounds stupid but I would ask some patience on this account. I admit that things were going much faster at start (when the first event started we had like one post every minute in the main thread and at first the metagame was at weekly turns), but it turned out that we had to slow down (and de facto slowed down ourselves) the events in order to find to pace at which both those that committed a lot of their free time on this (like you for instance) and those that wanted or needed to restrict their involvement to maybe one post every two days could agree. Currently the events are even slower than that but that is another issue and by the way not a fundamental one.
In my eyes the metagame is just where it should be and I expect to see some more action when the events are over.


Last edited by Iskar on Fri Aug 24, 2012 8:07 am; edited 1 time in total
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Isabel Tenorio
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 7:53 am

Thank you for clearing that up. I still firmly disagree, so I don't think the two of us will get anywhere at this stage.


What do the rest of you think?


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Iskar
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 8:01 am

Addition to the first point: When you have a more complex system of rules it is also easier to estimate the effects of a newly brought up action/building because there is more you can compare it to or you can even view the new action as a certain variation of a known one. If you have only a few fixed rules or allowed actions anything new is likely to be a full addition to the system with less overlappings that would allow a smoother embedding into the system.

And yes, I would very much like to hear more opinions on this, because it might be fun discussing stuff but in the end it might turn out quite fruitless and unecessary when one of us turns out to have been the only defender of his/her ideas.
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Laisha
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 8:05 am

DAMMIT, STOP RACING AHEAD OF ME!

*ahem*

Ultimately, at least from the games I've played (both tabletop-style and video), the best always have the strongest, most engaging story. That isn't to say that games that lack this element are bad, I just wouldn't rate them as the absolutely best I've played. The thing is, the current metagame system, while it certainly works and has an appeal I can fully understand, doesn't feel like the kind of game people sign up for this forum to participate in. People come to this forum to play a role, to be a different person, not to hash out numbers and technicalities.

Right now, however, there are far more numbers and technicalities going on than...roles. And the technical details still equals a lot of numbers, even if the members of orders were to be more involved in the metagame. In other words, except for people who find the details of management/micro-management (myself included, to an extent) fun, getting more people involved doesn't really solve the problem of the current metagame being boring. It's uninteresting and un-engaging. More people involved would just be a bigger conversation about costs and supplies rather than a conversation about the wheres, whys and whos. If I were to be in a metagame discussion, I wouldn't want to discuss how much a building costs (or the logic of the order building it to begin with), I'd much rather be debating its purpose. (For example: "Lord Stephen McStephensen wants to build a logging camp in Stephensen Village. It's in a potentially dangerous location due to a band of rogue knights in the area. Should we send some knights/retainers/regulars/etc. to protect the camp? How does this benefit the order? Could we recommend a better location for the camp?" Rather than: "The Knights of the Griffon want to build a logging camp in Stephensen village. Does this make good economic sense or not?")

It's all about the orders being economic instead of military powers, and while there's an argument to be made about orders increasing their power and supply base, it feels like we've just supplanted the purpose of the local lords in the territory we hold influence in. While it's true that some knights did grow very powerful in the medieval era, our orders are all located in the same kingdom and, while we may fight amongst ourselves, I don't see the king, so shortly after reuniting Pendor, just allowing the knights to divide it up into semi-autonomous regions that exact same way.

In many ways, it feels like we're approaching this game from a modern viewpoint, where we're far more aware of the consequences of our actions on a grand scale than we might be in a time like Pendor's. If we got into the minds of our characters and made orders from that viewpoint, I don't think we'd be making flax farms everywhere, we'd be determining where we need soldiers and fortifications, or who we buy supplies from. And we definitely wouldn't be looking to the long term consequences of such construction projects or their effects on the surrounding lands. We'd be thinking short terms with a far narrower focus. Simply: Do we live or do we die?

And the economic metagame is definitely confining. Unless you have the resource base to do extra projects (like the Silvermist), you have to build what you see in the rules to build yourself up, or else other orders will race ahead economically while yours is off doing a risky, screwball project that may or may not succeed and may or may not provide economic benefit.

While I see the reasoning for making a fair system, we should remember life isn't fair. Pendor definitely isn't fair. Just look at the standing of the various orders in terms of relatively power for an easy example of this. Maybe there will be debates and arguments if there are a simplified set of rules, with more leeway for participants. Then let them come and deal with them. Sometimes GMs just don't have to explain why they do things, just like life or God doesn't explain everything that happens to each of us. Sometimes things just happen, things we deal with or fall before. Not liking the explanation won't change the situation. If it ultimately results in a game that flows better and is more dynamic, I don't see how it's a negative.

Patience is all well and good, but not when you want to keep players. There needs to be a plot for that. Something they can latch onto emotionally and move along with. There's a lot of emphasis on the metagame right now and a drive to keep it as it is instead of adapting both it and the events to something the players can enjoy.
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Iskar
Peasant turned Lord
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 8:21 am

I don't really understand the point about the metagame keeping people from roleplaying. Somehow I have the impression that two things are being confused here.

In fact, only one player per order is necessary to keep the metagame running. The others can engage in it or jump in whenever they want or when there is a link to the actual roleplay. No one is explicitly required to delve into the meta game numbers unless he wants to. The metagame's sole purpose is to provide a reliable and flexible foundation for the RP. (cf. my long post above)

I admit that there is not too much roleplay going on with the extremely slow progress of the events. Since the metagame goes on unhindered by that it looks as if the metagame had taken priority over the actual RP. That is not the case. Moreover, by cutting down the metagame to a size that does not overshadow the currently tiny RP one does not solve the actual problem. Neither do I deem it advisable to sacrifice parts of the metagame in order to turn them into some sort of surrogate RP.
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Isabel Tenorio
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 10:48 am

Okay, I guess I'll keep responding.


I dispute the point that dealing with creativity is easier now because we have more knobs to turn. The fact is, the Metagame is so complex that it is rather difficult to determine just what impact changes will have on it, or how valuable things really are. And here is my evidence: The resource prices destroyed any balance or fairness in the metagame. The prices for mined goods were extreme, while the price for spice was flat. This gave the Silvermist and the Griffons a great deal of income, while everyone else was left out of it. There wasn't much point in building things besides those since the profit was so extreme. The Griffons built nothing for several turns and still had a better economy because of resource prices. If you claim that this was intentional, I call foul play.

Second, what are we doing? Are we RPing, or are we playing a boardgame? One of these has to take priority. I can't speak for anyone else, but I came here to RP, not to watch a boardgame be played. The metagame should be to enhance the RP only (I do believe that it can), it should not take on a life of its own and be kept or expanded for the sake of expanding it.

As for patience... we've been at this for MONTHS. We're still in the economic development phase after months of real-life time, five months just from the public orders that I can see. Lasting a year is quite good for a forum RP, we're not going to last 4 years. I fail to see the point of economic development anyway. If the purpose was to establish a non-lore based balance of power, fine. We've done that. The Silvermist win, the Griffons come in second, the Eventide third, etc. Let's rip out the ability to use RPs to make RPs. We can simplify this system so that mis-management is not easy. We can make it so messing up is rather hard to do, and we can simply make clear choices of what each Order wishes to do with their toys. I had proposed that we make the base recruitment point income of each hex based on the current value of that hex, we'll simply stop the economic development without retconning it.

We have a great base here for a lot of fun RP, we could scrap the metagame entirely, or better yet, we could revamp it so the RP is our focus and the metagame makes it better. Let's not waste it on this current metagame that doesn't make our RP scenes any better.
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Mordred
Dragon of the North
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 10:53 am

I think the key point being raised at the moment is that in order to survive, Orders are basically restricted to only building economic buildings at the moment, so the whole Meta Game has devolved into some kind of arms race. It doesn't matter that there are hundreds of other options, so as to remain competitive they have to build economic assets.

Can we reduce the importance of economics, and raise the importance of the other buildings? One of the strengths of Ana's proposal was to lock the economic potential of each hex, so perhaps they should continue to produce RP's (to be configured separately), while still allowing the option to build the other structures which can go some way to defining the possible tactics and strengths of each Order.

Using a system similar to the new recruitment system, the income of each hex can be modified depending on the buildings and actions of that Order; it would just need to be accepted that the GM's have the ultimate say on the outcome (though this too can be balanced with a loose set of rules giving a foundation for the level of effect possible).

Would these modifiers be global, or a per hex basis?
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Isabel Tenorio
Knight
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 10:56 am

I think it should depend on the situation.

For example, if there are bandits on the Jatu steppe, those hexes should be penalized locally. If on the other hand, the Dawn undergoes some kind of popular or unpopular reform, those modifiers should be global for the Dawn.

A base for that is Europa Universalis. A heresy may be localized to a single area, or it could be affecting the state-structure.

I think the basic influence model could be reasonably well merged with the current metagame. We will probably have to modify costs and the like, and probably change a few buildings, but we can do it without scrapping all the work that went into the lists. (Upgrades come to mind.)
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Mordred
Dragon of the North
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 11:41 am

Yes I liked the per hex modifiers with a global "base" figure.

Just to clarify (numbers made up)

Hex 1: Worth 100 RP
Order of the Dragons, have 52 Influence in Hex 1
Order of Dawn has 10 Influence in Hex 1
Dragons have "0.3" base economic bonus, and "0.2" for assigning a fleet to patrol the trade route.
Dawn has no Economic bonus

Dragons; 52% of the Hex worth = 52. Increase by 50% due to their modifier = 78RP income
Dawn; 10% of the Hex worth = 10. No modifier means they get just the 10.

Observations;
1. We can continue to use the current Influence system, as this is on a basis of 0-100
2. Hex quality is locked in, so Orders will have reason to attack and take high-profit hexes, or at least subvert the profits of the controlling Order.
3. Influence should be out of 100%, so the Dawn could get up to a maximum of 42 Influence without taking any hostile action against the Dragons. To get more however, they will need to get aggressive.
4. The Dawn could dispatch their own fleet to raid the Dragon's escorts, and if they sent a Player to do this, the effect would be more profound.
5. Low value hexes can be given extra bonuses, for instance Valonbray could offer a 10% discount on all ships built by that Order.

Issues;
1. How do we stop Orders from just "We're going to build more farms to boost the modifier by 0.1"... Should we?

Thoughts?
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Isabel Tenorio
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 11:50 am

I would outright say no building to boost income. To improve our situation, we should have to fight for it. We can keep this as a zero-sum game to ensure there is an innate motivation for competition. If the competition becomes more extreme than is deemed helpful, the GMs should re-evaluate and potentially change things up if the need arises. Depending on how we handle troop limits, an Order could conceivably simply stay neutral for a time to build their strength up, a risk-reward instead of pure reward.

Generally, we should be focusing our efforts on political and military matters. The implementation of a new system of irrigation ought to be left to Head Men and the sort.




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Isabel Tenorio
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 1:02 pm

/doublepost



What would be you guys' thoughts about buildings in general? The current metagame has a very nice list with things like watch towers and heretic cabals, along with the horse breeder and armorsmith. It would be a shame to just get rid of all of that goodness. With the increased opportunities to act in the Metagame, things like the espionage bonus could become important, and a great tie for the RP. The more we talk about this, the more opportunities I see with the non-economic aspects of the current metagame.

I would lean towards making them much less common, but much more substantial... IE, expensive and not building something in most hexes each turn. Castle levels can potentially be very impactful for RP too, but for defensive reasons rather than boosting income. Generally I would say if we keep the prices the same, we should reduce income dramatically to reflect that we no longer need to re-invest most of it to keep up.
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Laisha
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 5:32 pm

If the system were to be revised and there were to be buildings at all (and, conceptually, they are a good idea), they shouldn't have economic impact. We could easily fall into the current and inadvertent trap of the metagame being all about economies rather than light warfare (skirmishes and the like) and political maneuvering. We vie for influence in the courts, which would translate into economic advantage or whatever other advantage you can think up. Even taking the idea of this being an early stage of the RP into account...we're spending far too much time in the buildup phase. New players (as well as old) seek excitement, adventure, gruesome deaths because they're immature ninnies who run around like they're gods, etc. You know, what roleplayers do. If we were to take this from a purely RP perspective, I seriously doubt that we would just spend all of this time building up. We don't have a global sense of the world, merely a local one. We aren't lords, we are their servants (albeit, smarter ones). We should be taking direct and indirect action, but nothing that constitutes sitting on our hands awaiting the Great War.

Additionally (either decreasing income would be a way, as would increasing costs (though to a lesser extent)), each construction project should have some sort impact. Some sort of debate on its merits or lack thereof. Is it smart to build this palisade here as a temporary defense or would it be better to save for a more centralized castle, pending the local lord's approval? Can we iron out the logistics of building the castle? (Not the actual numbers of people or materials we need to build it (arbitrary numbers or not), but rather, can we get a supply of those elements, yes or no?) Essentially, my previous examples.

That would engage people in the metagame without boring them with lots of numbers and stats. We aren't building an abstract building, we're building a structure that has a cost, a reason and most of all, an emotional attachment, no matter how small. From all the literature and writing courses I've taken, the one thing I've taken away is that if you can't build some sort of emotional connection, you've failed to draw your audience in. The same thing applies here. I want to be involved in the metagame, but I feel no attachment to what is essentially an inventory.
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Kamos
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 7:22 pm

I'm not much a fan of the Metagame in general myself. I dreaded when I saw it being brought in and avoided having to deal with it for the most part. Always gave me a headache.

Naturally I support revising of the system in some way to create friction and competition instead of turtling as we have been and making it easier on organizing for players.
Right now we are just playing a little Total War game without the war. Take an area. Build upgrade set. Next tier. Upgrade more. Next territory.
Our areas are hardly unique and there is no rhyme or reason behind anything beyond number crunching, maximizing profits and at this point avoiding conflict as it's bad for business. Quite soulless really and totally unlike a large number of ideologically opposed fanatics.
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Iskar
Peasant turned Lord
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PostSubject: Re: Manifest Destiny (Discussion)   Manifest Destiny (Discussion) - Page 12 EmptyFri Aug 24, 2012 7:49 pm

You forget that all orders are in fact lords in at least one province. You can hardly forbid them to build up this province in whatever way.

Anyway, the metagame started under the premise that the lands of Pendor are emptied of capable hands as well as lords and deserted or devastated after the long wars and must be build up again. If you want we can speed up that phase and allow all orders a certain number of free buildings or a certain amount additional one-time budget to invest into their holdings, so afterwards they can concentrate more on the strategical and tactical buildings. The built up provinces will then create conflicts of their own, as orders will strike first and foremost at the wealthiest provinces of their rivals. Fighting for rich provinces will certainly not be half hearted, just imagine what would happen if the Gauntlet stroke at the Isenfeld Hills (Hex 45, our cash cow) with full strength.

Furthermore I think you are all still charging at the wrong enemy. The events and the free RP after that are supposed to provide the RP you're craving for, not some sort of cut short metagame acting as a substitute because you don't want to wait any longer for the events to continue. The metagame is only the underlay for this.
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