Manifest Destiny (Discussion)

A conciliatory proposal:

Mordred has just urged all hosts to get their events finished in the near future, so hopefully we will not have to wait long before we can fully engage in the roleplay once more.
I suggest all orders get a certain amount of money for the next turn and can build more than one building in each province (as some sort of a metagame wrap up for several turns), so we can mostly finish the phase of economic build-up and engage into more serious politics thereafter.
As soon as the events are finished we will try and create more links between RP and metagame for some three or four turns and if then it still does not appeal to you we can overthrow the whole system and try out another one.

We would need a VAST amount of money. Basically, we would have to push every building level to max and grant every Order every economic building they are capable of building. The end is not in sight at the current rate for years. We would have to push it so far that the consequences would be unforeseeable, just like with the resource prices.

We might as well go about the conversion of economic buildings into hex value, then see about how to handle the rest of the buildings.

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I think we have a very large difference of opinion regarding the purpose of the Metagame, Iskar. I want the metagame to be a representation of the RP, to be a tool to help it progress. I do not want a boardgame to determine our RP, I do not want it equal to our RP, I want it to serve our RP. That doesn't mean that the hard details bend everytime we post, but it does mean that the orders issued are not the supreme factor in this project.

The Metagame is brilliant and deep. After this playtesting, the main flaw with it is that the level of external threat is not enough to pull the Orders into being rational actors instead of economic actors. With a different group of players, with a different context (not RP) this would be a wonderful game. I'm sure a programmer could hammer out the code to do the math behind the scenes and keep it progressing easily enough to be played by itself quickly. Most of us here are not mathematicians, and mismanagement of the metagame is far too easy. It isn't a bad idea, it isn't a terrible system, it simply is not helpful to this RP.

Ana Sulran wrote:

We would need a VAST amount of money. Basically, we would have to push every building level to max and grant every Order every economic building they are capable of building. The end is not in sight at the current rate for years. We would have to push it so far that the consequences would be unforeseeable, just like with the resource prices.

Not at all. It would be enough to provide the orders with around 50000 denari and allow them to build all they want for one turn. Getting castle provinces to be pretty profitable is not really hard. You do not need to push all economic improvements to maximum to achieve a steady and reliable income you can work with. We can also lower the prices of the more interesting buildings such as armoursmiths to make them available more easily. The high end buildings would remain rather costly because they also provide heavy bonuses or perks and saving money to build them is rather a political decision than an economic one.

Ana Sulran wrote:

I think we have a very large difference of opinion regarding the purpose of the Metagame, Iskar. I want the metagame to be a representation of the RP, to be a tool to help it progress. I do not want a boardgame to determine our RP, I do not want it equal to our RP, I want it to serve our RP. That doesn't mean that the hard details bend everytime we post, but it does mean that the orders issued are not the supreme factor in this project.

The Metagame is brilliant and deep. After this playtesting, the main flaw with it is that the level of external threat is not enough to pull the Orders into being rational actors instead of economic actors. With a different group of players, with a different context (not RP) this would be a wonderful game. I'm sure a programmer could hammer out the code to do the math behind the scenes and keep it progressing easily enough to be played by itself quickly. Most of us here are not mathematicians, and mismanagement of the metagame is far too easy. It isn't a bad idea, it isn't a terrible system, it simply is not helpful to this RP.

As it seems our concepts do not differ that much. If you have read my past three or four posts you will have seen that I characterise the metagame as the underlay of the actual RP and its purpose to be providing background information about the general situation as well as the resources orders can call upon. Where our opinions differ is mainly about which type of metagame is best fit to fill that role. I'd like to remind you that you entered the whole RP when the events were already close to stagnation and I would ask at least that much of you as to wait until the events are done and see how a properly progressing RP and the underlying metagame look like. One can still overthrow everything afterwards if it proves not to work.

I’ve read it all, and it seems there is an interpretation problem in this thread.

I think the part of the answer was already given:

1) we can expect heavy RP once the events are over.
2) we don’t really have to care about the metagame if we don’t want to. This is a matter for GMs and grandmasters.
3) metagame is necessary. Relying only on RP to solve disputes is sure path to anger. Anger is the way of the dark side.
4) DD & Co. are working on a digital version of the metagame.

EDIT:

Instead of talking about how limiting the metagame is to some actions, why don't we simply suggest those actions and see what can be done, and test if it's really that limiting? It's a honest suggestion: I want to brainstorm possible grand RP actions and put the metagame to test. There are way too many words in this thread and I'd like to see concrete examples. Words can be easily misunderstood.

So, what do you want to do? Channel a river? Build Hadrian Wall? Burn the Larian woods? Create another knighthood order? Invite the king for a feast at your chapterhouse?

I don't think anyone is in favor of totally scrapping the metagame concept. Though it seems we are in favor of scaling it back.

Yes, I know the event progress is slow, and that's an issue. It is not the only issue. It isn't terribly hard to look at this and see the flaws.

There is competition here... but it is economic. As soon as that one-time boost is gone, we'll be back to the economic arms race. It won't actually address any of these flaws, because the system is still the same. The situation is exactly the same after we get free RPs as before. That is simply doing the same thing over again, we're just jumping ahead by a month or two. Why the push to not fix this properly?

I don't see where you take the information from that this is necessarily an economic armsrace. Of course in the beginning all orders need to boost their income so they actually have money to invest in other structures, but orders who spend exclusively on economy will find themselves with a bloody nose (at least) as soon as the huge amount of troops bound in the events is set free. The metagame wrap up + bonus money I suggested would not be spent without lasting effects but instead enable orders to establish an income base that allows them to build more interesting stuff. We should at least try and see how it works out. After we waited for more than 8 months for the events to finish, I think we can try one or two months more how the metagame supports a properly running RP.

Iskar wrote:

The metagame wrap up + bonus money I suggested would not be spent without lasting effects but instead enable orders to establish an income base that allows them to build more interesting stuff.

Herein lies the problem, in order to remain competitive, the Orders have to build even more economic assets. What people in the thread are saying is that they are bored of the economic build up. I agree things will change when we get to the next event, but I also believe that this is one aspect of the Meta Game we really do have to fix.

I have to take part of the blame here in introducing the raw materials as a cash crop as they completely ruined the current Meta Game economy, they were introduced to give a temporary income boost in order to get other structures up and running but in fact they had the opposite effect as Orders just reinvested those funds to construct even more economic assets.

Maybe we could combine the economics and military in the metagame. System could be like swedish medieval nobility, Frälse. Of course to make it work the hexes must get somekind of population and manpower rate. For example, hex 64 has 250 farms, and income of 500 in taxes. If half of the farms gives you men to the army, you get 250 soldiers and income of 250 in taxes. It should provide stable income rate so that need of economic buildings would be smaller.

Issues of course are the population and growth values. And whats the tax rates. Do some hexes get higher tax rate or shall the taxation be decided by the order?. This would great tensions between orders who want the population heavy hexes so they can raise bigger army. It would link the metagame more to the RP.

This just a thought, but this way economic buildings are not so high priority as you would also get some tax income.

What about increasing income of the lower tier economic assets, removing some of the top tier ones as well as other stuff that is not really needed (aristocratic manors for example)? That would give orders more income without forcing them to build more and more economic assets and it would effectively prevent any further economic arms race because there will simply be no further things to be built.

Additional details to my idea:

Doubling the income of most basic economic buildings (sawmills, mines, farms, plantations, harbours etc.) as well as reducing their cost so orders do not have to invest all their money into them.

Removing useless additional buildings (aristocratic manors, registrars, customs offices, library, tax assessor, artisans guild, barges, port, trade post)

Reducing costs of chapterhouses and interesting strategic assets (training grounds, boatbuilders, etc)

Removing the first tier of all upgrade buildings (smiths, fletchers, dyers, horse breeders) and turn them into primarily upgrade focused buildings instead of economic buildings with a side effect and making them cheaper to build with less requirements.

I think removing ports and trade posts is sensible, because a harbour is comprised of a number of different buildings that we already have: wharves, fishing huts, boatbuilders. Together they form what would have been subsumed under "port" and therefore we do not need the port as a separate building.

If we do this only one or two characteristic economic buildings remain for each province plus the very useful roads. that means more than half the build slots in a moderately built up province (two castle which costs 2x(1000 + 2000 + 5400) = 16800 RP and is not much compared to the other sums handled in the metagame, especially when we up the income of most buildings) remain free for sheriffs, training grounds, upgrade buildings and other stuff that makes the game more interesting.

Another thought that just occurred to me: When we start raiding and have no farms to burn and now sawmills to plunder, what fun would raiding be? So a certain amount of economic buildings should be kept.

All that I see here are a bunch of minor tweaks to a system that is inherently uninteresting. I think it's a big gamble to assume that the events ending will make everything better. I keep saying that there is no emotional attachment caused by the metagame right now. It should make us care about the standing and actions of our orders, instead of a system where you can slowly build out of poverty regardless of whether you care or not. My point is that it shouldn't just be about the grandmasters and gamemasters. It should make us all care. It shouldn't be a numbers game. It should be a human game.

Honestly, it's not just boredom, though that is a big part of it. It's that the system fails to encourage more than abstract thought about actions taken.

Think about it. While the mini-events ultimately weren't a great idea (though why is debatable), why wouldn't there still be other, global events? Events that may not be governed by inter-order actions in the metagame? Or just any kind of long term event? We could easily have the exact same results we have now, where the importance of the metagame unintentionally outweighs the proper RP. Tweaking the current system won't prevent it from turning out roughly the same as it is right now, which is why it should be changed.

In fact he metagame does not need to create an emotional relation. That is the part of the actual RP. Metagame was never intended to cause emotional relations.

It should evoke emotion.

That is my point. You can not immerse people in something they have no feelings for. That is why I keep saying the current metagame feels robotic and uninteresting. Because it is. The metagame shouldn't just be some background element of the RP that only a handful of people control. It should be something that all the players can recognize, understand without getting lost in a maze of numbers, and, most of all, enjoy. They should feel like they are involved with and directly influenced by the actions in the metagame, even if they aren't making the decisions. It is why I keep arguing that each action should mean something and not be the equivalent of clicking a button with your mouse.

We aren't playing a board game here. We're writing a story. The metagame is all well and good, but it doesn't work if it doesn't connect and intertwine with what we're doing as characters. It doesn't work if it doesn't influence and define those characters, even in the smallest of ways. And it won't connect as long as it's this economic chess game. As long as economics are visible and important, that's all it will be. Military and politics will be secondary to making a strong financial base. And once that base is fully built up (and there is a limit), the orders that reach that point first will be unstoppable because they'll have all the money in the world to throw around.

Forum roleplays best lend themselves to good story-telling. We should be telling those stories instead of worrying about economics, which is the province of lords anyway.

I would like to just QFE Laisha, but that would probably be frowned upon.

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The Metagame is how we get what we need to RP. The single most important one is troops. Troops details and the amount of them we get are the single most important aspect of the Metagame. Right now we are playing hex managers... well, 5-6 of us are. Building a farm, a harbor, a mine... none of this impacts the story. Not one bit. Sure, you could start skewing events to focus on that mine... but really, WTF.

The Metagame is inherently dehumanizing. I mean that in the sense that it takes away all the flavors of our Order,s as we all act in the same way, all the strengths and weaknesses of our characters, and it is not advancing the RP. The building side of the Metagame should be about choices that impact our Orders, for instance the armorsmith or horse breeder. Things that can impact our RP, not with great complexity that is just about boosting income and becoming a game itself.

Here is my evidence: The Events have been stalled, but the Metagame has kept running. There is the problem. The Metagame is not helping our RP one darn bit. If it were different, there would have been no reason to continue the Metagame despite the stalled events. The Metagame is currently ALL about economy. Scrap the economy, replace it with a simply system for troops, and see what we're left with. Then we scrap what doesn't fit, add some things that do, and make it more meaningful for the RP.

Using the influence model I originally proposed (Saeros proposed another system too, I commented that I thought it was starting with too much complexity and not helping, but a single opinion from one person is not a reason to forget the idea.): The Eventide send 50 Knights to intimidate in Hex 60, perhaps with a PC, perhaps not. This is building influence, which will give them more troops and thus is fufilling that purpose of the Metagame. However, we can also tell a story about this if we so choose. It doesn't have to be a story that has any impact itself beyond what the numbers said, but we can build RP on it. We absolutely cannot build fun RP on building farms.

When we're not otherwise occupied with events, this could serve as the spark for one. The Legion hears about this intimidation, and sends 30 Centurians to escort merchants and the like. On the Metagame map, they are building influence. However we can either write a story about their interaction, or bring a GM in and RP out this potential conflict... the influence actions take place, but now we have something fun to do with it. Future minor events should focus on this kind of interaction, things that are player initiated and player driven, with GM assistance to keep it smooth.

Ana Sulran wrote:

Here is my evidence: The Events have been stalled, but the Metagame has kept running. There is the problem. The Metagame is not helping our RP one darn bit. If it were different, there would have been no reason to continue the Metagame despite the stalled events. The Metagame is currently ALL about economy. Scrap the economy, replace it with a simply system for troops, and see what we're left with. Then we scrap what doesn't fit, add some things that do, and make it more meaningful for the RP.

Of course the metagame did not help the events, because these "mini"-events were in no proper way linked to it in the first place. They were laid out to be closed, independent events like the first ones and we have not even yet gotten to a more freely designed RP that allows more interaction and use of metagame-created resources.

I still do not see why we need emotions evoked by the supporting metagame instead of the actual RP, but how about each player gets to command a hex of his own while the grandmaster or 2nd-in-command keeps doing the general orders? That would create some relationship with the respective hex and its population.

That doesn't change what we're doing with that hex. It gets people involved in a game they don't want to play.


Iskar, we want the Metagame to be closely linked to the RP, the two need to be hand-in-hand... or else have no metagame at all. We don't want a separate game that we have to do right otherwise we can't be creative. That's what we've come to. You've argued that we have to have the metagame, otherwise the RP decays to the 'I'm invincible because I mowed the King's lawn so he gave me command of the royal army.' This means we -have- to play the Metagame to be able to RP well.

And we don't like this Metagame. It was a wonderful idea, there are a lot of great things, an amount of work was put into this that I can't even believe, but it isn't conducive for RP. It serves only a purpose to hinder, not to enhance. It's separate and limiting, not linked and a foundation.

It is separate only because the current events were not designed to last so long and thusly there was no thought about linking them to the metagame at all (most of them cover only a few days in game). I'd at least wait and see how things develop when we have finished the events.

It is limiting only when you're too lazy to use your creativity: A ton of timber from your sawmill may only be a ton of stupid virtual timber at first, but you can do a lot with it except for selling it: Fortify villages, build watchtowers, use it to feed great signal fires (like the ones between Rohan and Gondor), use it to feed great braziers or nightfires around your castles to spy nightly attackers, build roadside inns with it to help the merchants, invest it in equipping your castles with stationary siege engines, etc. All this can wonderfully be roleplayed and it gives your provinces some sense of uniqueness. The same goes for stuff you dig from the ground or crops from your fields. There is a multitude of uses for these things, you just have to use your mind. (Which, as far as I can see, would not be a problem at all.)
The different buildings and structures in each hex provide the environment for the roleplay taking place there. A skirmish or any other event actually taking place in a well developed grassland province with roads, chapels, rich corn fields and wealthy villages is certainly different from a poorly equipped province with a cart track at most, only a few fields but bogs and groves between the villages. Strong castles with large garrisons make the roleplay different from roughly built stockades with a few militia men. Fishing Huts in a coastal province might allow you to seize the boats and use them to your own tactical purposes, the lumbermen working at the sawmills might be spontaneously recruited as light infantry with heavy axes (or might just as well turn against you). Raiding a hill province with windmills will cause difficulties for the nearby grassland provinces with farms or force them to use a more distant mill to grind the corn, leading them through territory your raiders control. You see, there is no limit to creative uses of the foundations the metagame lays.

Hi. Please give some thought to my post.


I liked Ana's examples.

I'll address what seems to be one of the major problems, one that is repeated in almost every post: buildings and their economic role. I suggest the following:

- Remove individual buildings. They cannot be built anymore. In their place, put "building complexes". That is: no more "farms", "fletchers", "blacksmiths", "cart tracks", or similar features.

Instead (so as to not completely abandon the metagame), allow complexes or districts, and make them expensive and time demanding (so that a choice has to be made, and no one can ever build everything. Very much like Civilization's Wonders).

For example:

Commercial Plaza: a large plaza in the town. In provides a central, safe and easily accessible place for merchants to do their trade. This "building" generates more money for the city, and increases the goods that the order may trade.

Aristocratic Quartier: a walled district, with beautiful gardens, orchards and fountains. It's protected by guards and provides the nobles a safe place to wander, the lowborn being forbidden to linger there. Naturally, this "building" will attract nobles from other towns, and, in time, the aristocratic population of that town will grow - a phenomenon that the Order can use as it pleases.

Slums: shaggy, ill-built shacks, spreading all around the city walls. It attracts the poorer strata of the kingdom, and is a sure way to spread diseases. However, it does give an immense advantage during sieges! The enemy will think twice before moving his army throught those straight alleys, filled with hungry and sick people.

Engineering Grounds: a wide, treeless field, filled with all sorts of equipments. This is the place where engineers can try out their inventions, dig the ground for better mining tools, experiment on walls (and their destruction), and develop their knowledge.

Radiant Cross Mission: A tall tower, serving as a mission of the Radiant Cross physicians.

Armorer's Complex: Most towns have one smith that sells all kinds of metalwork. This town, however, does not. The Order has invested in high quality professionals, so it has built a whole block for blacksmiths, where each one of them is a master in a single equipment. There is a smith that works only with shields, another with only plates, another with swords, another with maces, and so on. They may be expensive, but they provide the order with extremely high quality equipment - even for their militia.

I can keep going forever.


I mean, geez, this is an ultra-militarized kingdom. We expect that every major town has some way of producing armor, weapons, of breeding horses, of growing crops and such. We expect watchtowers to be everywhere, and we expect castles to have walls. What matters is the flavor , mentioned by Ana. Therefore, building choices should only include something that makes the difference. If everyone has a "horse breeder", why don't we allow the construction of "Master Breeder of Sarleon Hunters"? This is something exceptional, almost unique, and which could affect the RP (by assigning some of these horses to units, making them faster and so on). As in:

Watchtowers: everyone has it, no need to build it. Now the Silvermists are building a special kind of watchtower, one that uses mirrors and light for better range at night. This makes Silvermist watchtowers unique.

Bridges: every river hex has it, so no one has to waste time building it. But the Silvermist are building actual castles over bridges, thus turning them into something else. This makes Silvermist bridges unique.

Farmland: everyone has it. But the Silvermists have fortified all of theirs, thus making them more than simple farms.


This is my point: Let's assume everyone already has basic infrastructure, and let's focus on more special things. These things have far greater RP potential, and, essentially, this is what matters.

I am not contradicting myself there, as you seem to insinuate.

What I talked about in my first post are actions similar to what Saeros suggested: Things that have lasting effects on the game, especially on the actual military or economical value of a hex.

What I talked about in the second post are actions that either just use what is there, tactical uses of surroundings in battles and general missions, or they are permanent uses of resources that have lasting RP consequence - not metagame ones. They do not modify the income of a hex or permanently provide you with more soldiers. You can roleplay these actions and in the end you might gain an easily balanceable bonus to your standing with a certain faction (merchants, peasants, etc.) or just a clearly defined RP bonus (e.g. braziers give you a chance to detect nightly assaults).

I'm failing to ultimately see the distinction.


You don't want custom orders, you just want custom anything-you-can-dream-of? The orders already listed cover most of everything at their basic level, such as 'Intrigue'

Helloes you all,

I strongly suggest we all take one day off and don't post anything in this thread tomorrow (Saturday). I think we all need to read everything written so far one more time, and then come back on Sunday with cooler heads.

This is so important that I wrote in bold and green! :-)

Seriously, think calmy about the whole thing.

Seconded. I deleted the poll thread since its options seemed to be prone to being misunderstood. We shall devise another poll later.

Copypasted again because it's that important!

Helloes you all,

I strongly suggest we all take one day off and don't post anything in this thread tomorrow (Saturday). I think we all need to read everything written so far one more time, and then come back on Sunday with cooler heads.

This is so important that I wrote in bold and green! :-)

Locked.

Tempers are beginning to flare and this is no way to solve the current issues. I am in the process of writing up some new modifications based on the feedback we have generated thus far, I have purposefully not heavily intervened in this discussion as I wanted to ensure that I had reached the root of the problems here directly from you, the players, and I think that I have done so now.

To be resumed tomorrow evening (GMT)