Shattered Kingdoms

People want dual membership primarily for cabal spying. I suggest an alternative. The 'cabal spy' command, usable only by cabal leaders. Limit each cabal leader to creating one or two player spies per cabal. Some initial details:

*Effectively tarnishes the spies current cabal/tribunal abilities, but lets them keep access to their first cabal's HQ.
*Allows the spy player to gain another cabal/tribunal and learn THEIR skill set.
*Have it cost money out of the cabal/tribunal funds. Simulate the cost of funding an effective subterfuge.

I see complications on this of course:

*What to do when the spy is selected by their victim cabal/tribunal to be a spy for ANOTHER group (a double agent scenario).
*How do you manage communication channels?

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I see an idea like this limiting the chaos of 'everyone being a spy' and effectively accomplishing a very limited dual membership option. It wouldn't be as robust as what everyone else wanted, but it would have less fall-out both IC and OOC in terms of pissing people off to no end and still give people a viable means of doing the whole spy thing.

My random thought for the day.

Discuss.

I like this idea a lot better then dual membership for everyone. Could generate some nice RP between cabals and tribs.

Good idea, how playable is it really. Will the MC, who inducts darkies and the occasional graybie, ever be able to get one of their members as a spy into the hammer, who inducts lighties? Adepts and hammer have 0 chance of spying on each other, spies would not work really because alignments would prevent efective spying. It would work best with tribunals, even then some are very hardcore about alignment.

How hard was it for a Russian to get into the CIA back in the 60s, 70s, or 80s? Some things just can't be done, and you need to accept that.

The idea was meant to offer an option for where and when it's feasible through RP.

Great Idea, Salak. It's easy to see why you were Dulrik's most trusted imm for a while. I would take this over dual membership anyday. I like the idea.

As for the Hammer and Adepts not being able to spy on each other, that's bogus. I'm sure you can find a Darky that's willing to spy on the Adepts for the right compensation, or a lighty you can disillusion enough though *gasp* RP to motivate him to try and affect change by giving some secrets to the adepts, for the greater good ofcourse.

As for spying, <POLITICS REMOVED>.

I'm with Joe on this one - I really don't see it happening.

Unfortunately, I'm at work so I can't fully respond to this idea. I would like to point out that the suggestion of Dual Membership goes much deeper then just allowing for spy RP. It addresses a great number of issues actually this just being one of the more popular ideas.

Lei Kung

While the spy idea is slightly simpler, both ideas require me to completely re-engineer the cabal and tribunal systems. I do like the spy idea in that it is less extreme of a change and doesn't prohibit the full dual-membership idea later if it was still desired. Still, they both seem like a lot of work and the spy idea, while less risky, also has less payoff.

Of the top of my head, I see a couple issues with this creative idea. There is of course the problem of secrecy in terms of OOC communications. Without being able to conceal the spy from members of the cabal, membership lists will leak out. This could (and I believe would) crush spy RPs.

Secondly, this then limits the opportunity to be a spy to only those the leaders see fit to do so. Granted, even in Dual Membership this is the case but the overall approach is different. In this suggestion 1 or 2 hand selected members are chosen to be spies (also limiting the number of organizations that can be spied on). In Dual Membership a player is allowed to, prevented by a leader though exposure or punishment. This means the opportunity is more open for a greater number of players. Also, this only addresses the issue of spy RP. It doesn’t help with organization under-population, kingdom warfare, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, this is an interesting and inventive idea, I just see greater benefits in Dual Membership currently.

Lei Kung

We can have cabal spies without any code changes: The spy simply joins the cabal he's spying on instead of the cabal he's loyal to. Should he quit being a spy, for whatever reason, he just needs an immortal's permission to join his true cabal. All that's needed is the decision that such cabal changes should be permitted.

I'm not fond of spies in the first place. Yet if we want them, let's at least not waste coding time on them unnecessarily.