Suggestions for improving RP.

Allright, I think that this has gone on for too long. At first I loved the RPing here, especially during the first main event, but now it feels like grinding. Every and each post except for a few exceptions are simple lists of orders rather than roleplaying - they are BORING to read. I feel like roleplay has been completely forgotten. I actually have an idea on how to do it INSTEAD of the current system. We have to have a thread like this - now they can see what we players want to happen here.

We could have a SEPARATE board called "The Battlefield". It would have subboards, containing each order's own metagaming - orders, battle statistics, everything related to the meta part of events. Instead of this current system, which just makes my eyes go spinning round and round while trying to search for the correct pieces of information.

Here's how it'd work:

Before entering battle, the order's grandmaster would make a new thread, for example: "Event name - site of the battle". He would post all the statistics there, including troop numbers and supplies and other stuff. Then the event's host would post the numbers from the OTHER side, for example:

GRANDMASTER MASTIFUS: 100 Knights of the Dragon and 250 retainers attending the event. The townsfolk of Rane and the countryside around it supply them for the time being.
Current action: Marching towards Rane.

EVENT HOST: 1100 Mystmountain raiders and 50 Bearclaw Berserkers. Currently supply themselves by raiding the countryside. Current action: Raiding the countryside.

Any major movements will be posted in the thread. The thread poster should include a map of the site of the battle, too, if possible - makes it much easier. (Mordred could tell us how to make those coloured polygons on the map). The minor actions, like using a special trait of the order, could be posted as a little OOC note after the post itself.

I think that this would give a lot more room for role-playing and make it significantly easier to get a grasp of what's actually happening OOC.

Sounds like a good idea. A drawback would be that it doubles the work of the gms, but in time it could work well.

I would use it, but, personally, I'm comfortable with anything. Receiving only some short descriptions ("your squad dies attacking") allows me to elaborate on that, so that I can post something that says exactly the same thing, but with RP ("Sir Olaf, servant of the shield and leader of Silvermist's Icy Death Squad, looked at his ruby-pommeled sword for the last time: he knew that this was going to be his last charge. No one can safely crush a wall of pikemen with a saddle horse. This is certainly true when they outnumber you 20 to 1. He never questioned an order, but this time he actually wondered if he had read the Grandmaster's message correctly. "He should have used a comma there", he thought... blablabla etc.")

In fact this is an issue we have been pondering and discussing for quite some time. The main problem is that the host of an event usually has to play more NPCs than there are players. I'll give you an example from the Eventide's current event: (I'll not give away vital information, so there should be nor problem with it.)

Taking part in the event are Celdiur and Varys, the latter accompanied by two NPCs, one of which is fully controlled by me for story reasons. The dramatis personae are

Dhez'ral, the local watch captain
Ghalvas, priest of Vata
Father Illacus, priest of Damia Provideo
Jalal, a watchman
Khalid, a watchman
a watch-sergeant
a butcher
an old couple selling vegetables
three apothecaries
a drunkard
a tavernkeeper
some gamblers
several other watchmen
several shady figures

You see that while the players only control their own characters I have to take care of many many more, making sure they all retain a certain degree of authenticity, adding some funny lines or characteristic behaviour, inventing numerous names and appearances so the players don't have to deal with a huge mass of faceless NPCs. I'm not saying I don't like doing all that stuff, but I cannot deny that it's a hell lot of work to do. Now this is not the only event I tend to and Azlanek's situation is even more tense. I hope this helps understanding a bit why we have been reducing the RP efforts of the hosts lately.

Then let the players participate. I would be more than happy to RP some characters for the hosts, just in order to lessen their burden.

The problem is that several characters are important to the story, so the host has to decide what they do and how they do it in order not to give away game breaking information. In a proper RP everything but the player characters is the domain of the host and so far the only way to reduce the weight on the host's shoulders is to have a lot more players per event.

And now we have reached an another conclusion: having a lot of separated mini-events was probably a bad idea.

Tell me something new, mate

We've reached that conclusion long ago, but, alas, we'll have to finish what we've started and we'll do it well. So maybe things will go a bit slower, but I think most people will value quality above speed.

Quality is always better, and I also like the idea of a seperate thread, that would make finding information much easier....

How about you get members of another order to rp for the characters that you were talking about and you tell them how the characters would behave and they would do it to the best of there abilities. I know that that might reduce quality but at this point I realy just want to get on with the rp.

for example:Blaze (member of Dawn) rped for Drunkard following character guide disrespectful to anyone, aggresive, reckless, drunk, hates eventide, sad inside.

Then Blaze would rp something like:
As the Eventide walked into the tavern Luther (fake name) scofed and spit on the floor. Standing up to fast he nearly fell back and hit his head, seeing Luther standing aggresively his friend tried to wrestle him back to his seat but being strong Luther easily broke away and grabed his cup of ale from the table. Luther began walking toward the small group of Eventides while sipping ale, obviously his mind was in a fog for when he made it to the group without falling somehow he immediatly shout obscure threats and false accusations.

So thats what I was thinking about doing to help speed things up.

Ah but that tends to ruin the mystery of the other orders events for foreign members.

True and having to wait for too many people that are no proper players slows down the event even more.

I think in the future have the devs create more large an unaproachable antagonists and structure events so the players are more at odds with eachother, so the intense battles are player vs player, not mod vs 20 players

True, agreed here.

However I will be able to RP some characters here and there in my own event; I suggest that everyone who thinks that he is good enough and has time to do it, tells his respective event host that he could be of assistance in the roleplaying of a character or two.

Quote :

I think in the future have the devs create more large an unaproachable antagonists and structure events so the players are more at odds with eachother

Agreed. Although you don't need to be a dev to make that happen, as this is ultimately in the hands of the 7 grandmasters.

No i mean like specifically make an event that half the order will be for and half against, say the Shadow legion purged a snake sect cell they found, but there were hundreds of baby girls there, some of which have grown fangs and hiss softly, do you choose to purge the entire sect or have mercy on them? Then the more gentle knights would demand mercy, while the ones more duty bound to wipe out the snake cult demand there death. Or even maybe the guy who was ex snake cult starts up some funny buissness and hides away one of the priestesses, that sorta stuff, cause then the devs only have to enter to say who wins a dual or whether a clever plan works or not.

Personally i found that i dont really pay any, if all, attention to the meta game, because its not RP'd, how about instead of it bieng on going, you split all territories evenly among orders then only have the meta game come in for the major events and for troop movements. I think the devs have complicated things for themselves alot with the battles and the civilisation management, just hve simple game plans, say the leaders of a battle each draw up a map of what there sending there men to do and then the devs take an estimated guess on what would happen, or something simple like that, have the battles more RP intensive instead of number crunching intensive. As for who wins what when it comes to order vs order, Mordred i guess should decide that, but also, have it so the order with a better story or brilliant plan wins, make whoever wins to be the one with the most interesting carry on effect from it (within reason of course).

DrSane wrote:

No i mean like specifically make an event that half the order will be for and half against, say the Shadow legion purged a snake sect cell they found, but there were hundreds of baby girls there, some of which have grown fangs and hiss softly, do you choose to purge the entire sect or have mercy on them? Then the more gentle knights would demand mercy, while the ones more duty bound to wipe out the snake cult demand there death. Or even maybe the guy who was ex snake cult starts up some funny buissness and hides away one of the priestesses, that sorta stuff, cause then the devs only have to enter to say who wins a dual or whether a clever plan works or not.

Personally i found that i dont really pay any, if all, attention to the meta game, because its not RP'd, how about instead of it bieng on going, you split all territories evenly among orders then only have the meta game come in for the major events and for troop movements. I think the devs have complicated things for themselves alot with the battles and the civilisation management, just hve simple game plans, say the leaders of a battle each draw up a map of what there sending there men to do and then the devs take an estimated guess on what would happen, or something simple like that, have the battles more RP intensive instead of number crunching intensive. As for who wins what when it comes to order vs order, Mordred i guess should decide that, but also, have it so the order with a better story or brilliant plan wins, make whoever wins to be the one with the most interesting carry on effect from it (within reason of course).

GM's, would perhaps lessening the meta-game relieve stress on you guys?

Nope, meta-game is essentially handled by Mordred and me and the actual problem is not crunching some numbers but tending to the numerous RP events.

As for your suggestions, DrSane, they'd essentially remove the effects of good strategy and tactics in favour of the whim and will of the gamemasters. Being beneficial to producing interesting stories cannot be a criterion for having an order win a battle, otherwise we will loose ourselves in endless discussions why which order won what battle and so on.

Personally I'd rather advocate a contrary strategy to make things easier for the hosts: The meta-game should by itself produce several conflicts. Certainly your orders have different ambitions and everyone wants to achieve their goals. The rules are not a restraint that keep you from doing things, but rather something to start from. Develop your own plans and ideas on how to achieve your orders RP-goals (wiping out the Noldor, exterminating heresy, getting humans and Noldor to live in peace, holding Ravenstern against all odds, etc pp.) and thusly conceptualise your own custom events that you can play out, while the host responsible does not have to think of a story by himself, but can restrict himself to giving you the outcome of your actions.

I think that my problem with this is simply the lack of motivation. I can't find the will to do any of this meta-game, since I only care about role-playing here anymore. And still, I would not like the Shadow Legion to die.

But I will build my play here from roleplaying, eventually reaching the rules and metagame aswell. I think that I actually have some ideas, Iskar - expect a PM.

Thanks for taking the time to expand the discussion on this, it is something we have been trying to tackle behind the scenes for a while now as the problem of Gamemaster burnout is becoming critical; I don't think that there is a single one of us that is not feeling the effects of it at the moment.

The question here becomes "what do we do about it?" and to this I do not yet have an answer. I want to put all my cards on the table here, and say that while I realise that many of you dislike the meta-game, it is really the only thing which is keeping my interest now. I have virtually no affiliation with PoP any more, and my hands are very full working on my own game and company. There are other members of the Dev Team now responsible for community management, I only continue in this role with you guys because I love the passion that we all share for the lore of Pendor.

Now, with this being said my own feelings are that I am willing to continue to do the meta-game stuff, however this gets more difficult as you guys express dissatisfaction towards it. That is not to say I take it personally, of course not, only that we need to change some things in order that everyone gets more out of it. It is currently rather too much of a "elite club" where only the Grandmasters (or their representative) determines policy, and the rest have little if any impact on it.

I think here lies the problem, the meta-game was created in order to generate conflict between the orders, which in turn creates content for new RP situations rather than artificially creating events as we have done thus far. Those events are, to be blunt, entirely unsustainable. They burn the game masters out like nothing else, and are simply too slow moving to actually achieve anything. I therefore believe that we need to change the meta game to make it more approachable for everyone. It needs to have a direct line on the RP situations for the hardcore roleplayers like Marcus, while retaining enough strategic consideration to engage those like Iskar and myself.... and everyone else in between.

I think this may require a restructuring of the meta-game rules. I think its strength lies in the physical representation of what is going on (the hex map), and the battle rules (like the Order troop stats, so that everything remains fair). There are some aspects which certainly over complicate it, like influence, and some which are simply too complex as they stand right now, like the economics. The meta-game should be there as a driver to create RP situations, not to stifle creativity entirely and turn it into a pen and paper game of Civilisation.

My idea therefore is to give each hex an economic value, which basically determines the number of troops you can recruit there, (perhaps with some bonuses like +1 to armour, or additional recruits) so that the intrinsic value of each location is dead clear. We then give each Order an RP objective which they need to complete in order to gain additional bonuses (in game terms from the "Crown", but in reality they are just game mechanics).

These would be something like the following;
Eventide : Spread the heresy.
Dawn : Contain the heresy.
Dragon : Reclaim "lost territories" back to Ravenstern.
Griffon : Reclaim "lost territories" back to the Crown.
Silvermists : Hold the forests of Laria.
Gauntlets : Take the forests of Laria.
Legion : Defeat the Snake Cult incursions.

These objectives are of course open, each Order should have their own goals and ambitions. The meta game is just there to offer the ability to actually "complete" them. These goals are are done through RP encounters between the Orders / factions involved, and through Meta-game manoeuvring. Gamemasters would oversee the lot and try to make some kind of sense of the situation and reward those who are fulfilling these objectives, and urge those who are not on.

Therefore the content is created by the Orders and work between Orders, with the game masters serving as referees setting the goals and rewards, while ensuring that everything is done from an even playing field.

I have to say, I rather enjoy the meta-game, as little as I participate in it, particularly the elements that Mordred mentioned. The big issue with it is that it is far too removed from the actual role-playing. Heck, it actually moves independently of the role-playing, which makes the meta-game seem out of place next to what we're actually doing in our events.

A short comment:

Quote :

These would be something like the following;
Eventide : Spread the heresy.
Dawn : Contain the heresy.
Dragon : Reclaim "lost territories" back to Ravenstern.
Griffon : Reclaim "lost territories" back to the Crown.
Silvermists : Hold the forests of Laria.
Gauntlets : Take the forests of Laria.
Legion : Defeat the Snake Cult incursions.

and

Quote :

Therefore the content is created by the Orders and work between Orders.

It somehow still seems too shallow. My impression is that grandmasters have been too shy to conduct any outstanding actions with/against each other. I don't necessarily mean war, but open defiance to the crown, making bold and unexpected alliances, RPing their lore roles properly, assassination, kidnapping, corruption, preaching, converting, clever political maneuvres - anything with potential to promote large scale changes. I mean, until now we have only reacted: defended against invaders, tried to solve civil war, tried to find the assassins - while in fact one should expect more aggressive behaviour from the overly proud, overly powerful and self-righteous royal orders. Again, this doesn't mean war. Just some proactivity (and having an agenda, in the first place).

This is ultimately the grandmasters' choice, so any solution must come from them. I suppose you could trigger some movement in this direction by having the king set an IC meeting with all grandmasters. Each should talk to you about their problems, and also with themselves.

As it is, there is little contact between them, and even less between players from lesser ranks. It is only natural that there is also not much player-to-player interaction.

Saeros wrote:

A short comment:

I don't necessarily mean war, but open defiance to the crown, making bold and unexpected alliances, RPing their lore roles properly, assassination, kidnapping, corruption, preaching, converting, clever political maneuvres - anything with potential to promote large scale changes. I mean, until now we have only reacted: defended against invaders, tried to solve civil war, tried to find the assassins - while in fact one should expect more aggressive behaviour from the overly proud, overly powerful and self-righteous royal orders. Again, this doesn't mean war. Just some proactivity (and having an agenda, in the first place).

Speak for yourself
Whether my efforts pay off or not, I am making them, that's all I will say.

Thing is, it hasn't developed that far yet. But as we all know, there is an alliance between Silvermists and Legion, plus we have some metagame plans for the future.

Saeros wrote:

A short comment:

Quote :

These would be something like the following;
Eventide : Spread the heresy.
Dawn : Contain the heresy.
Dragon : Reclaim "lost territories" back to Ravenstern.
Griffon : Reclaim "lost territories" back to the Crown.
Silvermists : Hold the forests of Laria.
Gauntlets : Take the forests of Laria.
Legion : Defeat the Snake Cult incursions.

and

Quote :

Therefore the content is created by the Orders and work between Orders.

It somehow still seems too shallow. My impression is that grandmasters have been too shy to conduct any outstanding actions with/against each other. I don't necessarily mean war, but open defiance to the crown, making bold and unexpected alliances, RPing their lore roles properly, assassination, kidnapping, corruption, preaching, converting, clever political maneuvres - anything with potential to promote large scale changes. I mean, until now we have only reacted: defended against invaders, tried to solve civil war, tried to find the assassins - while in fact one should expect more aggressive behaviour from the overly proud, overly powerful and self-righteous royal orders. Again, this doesn't mean war. Just some proactivity (and having an agenda, in the first place).

This is ultimately the grandmasters' choice, so any solution must come from them. I suppose you could trigger some movement in this direction by having the king set an IC meeting with all grandmasters. Each should talk to you about their problems, and also with themselves.

As it is, there is little contact between them, and even less between players from lesser ranks. It is only natural that there is also not much player-to-player interaction.

The Dawn has an agenda. That is all I will reveal.

I think most orders have their owns plans and agendas in place, many concerning other orders.



- Anyway, I'm not going to offer feedback or suggestions, but I will say this; I'm pretty worn out with both the roleplaying and the meta gaming. I have a lot of experience in the genre, with many dozens of roleplays under my belt (both as a player and the GM). I'll say this, out of all of them, only one has ever finished.

One.

They've certainly died out before they've reached half the age that this Roleplay is. It's natural that people begin to lose interest over time.


I'm not going to say that this is going to absolutely die, but, People getting worn out is perfectly natural.