Shattered Kingdoms

I'm moving my serious proposal away from the flames for more discussion. Please feel free to add to the concept or flame it at your leisure.





Despite Edoras' insistence, this cannot actually be done currently because players won't respect the idea of a diplomat. It's kill-kill-kill everyone in the opposing faction and accept nothing short of humilated surrender.

The idea here is to get the PvP players interacting with the RPers to create a diverse and multi-faceted organization system. I understand that this requires slightly higher player participation in factions, but it would help to give those who may be less inclined to be involved for their perma-noobness incentive to try. For the purposes of this discussion, we'll call the split positions "Diplomat" and "General."



Suggested Considerations:

- "Diplomat" flag causes attacker of opposing faction to be warned of status (enter last command to continue/attack a messenger? this is madness!)
- Successful murder of "Diplomat" is noted as a crime in any kingdom but only garners law punishment in his/her homeland
- Successful murder of "Diplomat" automatically nullifies truce/alliance status with his/her faction and that of the murderer
- "General" receives incentive for warparty leadership -- I'm thinking 2 guards in his group, but this may be OP (perhaps a rallying cry type effect on all cabal/trib members grouped with General)
- Successful murder of "General" gives small bonus to enemy combatants
- In the event that a faction has only one leader, all bonuses are reduced and single leader has the ability to both affect diplomacy and lead battles






I'm ready for your thoughts!

No, these changes are not only ill-conceived, but completely unnecessary.

^Withstoopid.

No. They're NOT ill-conceived. They're conceived of the notion that both RPers and PKers have a place in both the tribunal/cabal system and SK at large. That's sort of, you know, the POINT of the whole "Where Roleplay and Tactics Collide" slogan of the game.

You can agree on premise but not specifics and elaborate on what you'd rather see, or you can say, "No. I don't want to deal with those noobs, I just want to smash-smash-smash like we've always done because I don't feel like they add any value to the game."

It kind of feels like your simple dismissal is the second thing.

Can't someone put "diplomat" in their title, and let everyone know that they are a messenger? Having a hard-coded penalty for killing a "messenger" would be really annoying, since these messengers could just be gate targets and spies. Aldric was able to get parole and walk into enemy territory to talk to 5+ lightie leaders about diplomacy, or the leviathan threat or whatever. I didn't get attacked. And lighties knew they could arrange to talk peacefully with him. I feel that this kind of respect and honor between enemies should be earned with consistent RP, not with a code that will likely be abused.

I like where this is going, but not exactly in the same direction. No bonuses for killing anyone. I do believe that is unnecessary. Maybe let's go with this.

Same Diplomat/General positions. Zhenshi is at a truce with everyone, and an alliance with no one. Zhenshi gets attacked while the General is online, but the Diplomat is not. General successfully defends, and retaliates. Ah, but wait, there is still a truce.

Now this is a part that I'm not sure about. I was thinking of showing a warning, but that could potentially be abused to learn of what a character is a member of. I do think something should happen here, just not sure what.

An alternative, if a faction has attacked you, and the Diplomat isn't online, the General can declare war, but only after a recent attack. Maybe a month in-game. When he logs in, he could get a status report from a guard that can tell him what factions have attacked in the past month or something. He can declare war on those factions.

If no one has attacked in the past month, the General can't declare war on anyone, but the Diplomat can declare wars at his leisure.

That'd be my take on it.

EDIT: Forgot the part about treason or impeachment or whatever you want to call it.

If a General just goes out attacking truced or allianced factions, the Diplomat should have a way to impeach him, but ONLY if the General has actually attacked someone. Of course, if the General can provide proof that the attack was warranted, the Diplomat can say Oh, okay, that's cool. If he can't provide proof, or if the Diplomat doesn't find the reason adequate for an attack, then he could impeach him. If the General attacks an entire faction because someone called him fat, I'd say impeach him, because he's started a war over personal reasons. Now, if someone called the Queen fat, that's a different story.

But wait, there's more. This only turns on a flag for the faction that asks an immortal to review the case. The command for impeachment would be 'impeach <name> <reason>'. If the immortal needs more explanation, use the astral boards or whatever.

They aren't bad suggestions, but I would say where is the line you draw between Role Play in and of itself and codification. In some ways it should be enough that players agree upon diplomats and players enforce the ramifications of breaching those terms.

Some bigger issues I've noticed:

Communication is tough in the game right now.

> The bulletin boards are difficult ways to communicate in game. (So I've noticed) And they require players to actively check for new messages.

Role Playing Versus Game Mechanics

> I think there are a number of players who prioritize tactics before Role Play.

-------

Potential Ideas Communication Ideas:

Cabal / Religious members sign up for notice of messages on their bulletin boards through membership.

> Aka copies of notes will be sent to your "personal message board" whenever they are posted. Players will be reminded of unread letters when they log in.

Improve the communication between players and you'll strengthen organizational ties.

> Allow players to write notes to other players "personal message board" and have the same effect. (Notice will be given when they log in).


Potential Role Play ideas:

> Create a means to level without grinding NPC's

One of the most successful changes I ever saw on a mud was a system which granted experience over time to players who were role playing.

How did it work?

- After an undisclosed number of ticks without gaining exp through combat, experience would start to be given.
- Every player had a hidden value that was used by the immortals as a gauge and evaluation of their RP. The value was on a scale from 0 to 10. 0 Being extremely poor RP and 10 being extremely good RP. Both extremes were rarely given.
- RP immortals would evaluate the quality of a players RP on occassion, in part through observation, and in part through a character written player concept.
- The amount of exp granted per tick had a multiplier influenced by their RP scale. (At 0 they'd receive NO exp and 10 they'd experience the most they could per tick)
- I believe each character would default on creation to a gauge in the middle.

What was the effect of the change?

The effect of the change was that players no longer felt the need to engage themselves in level grinding so often. Or if they did, the purpose might have changed. They might still go fight, but to improve their skills. Of course players could do that between each other, turn off the auto kill, and use practice swords (for example).

It increased RP and particularly it increased RP with characters who were not fully maxed out in all mechanical areas of the game, because RP became a mechanism for growth.

It made players conscious of the fact that they needed to RP all the time. A character caught killing an NPC that fell outside the scope of their reasonable character concept, might have been penalized in the background without their even knowing it. (Because they were rated for poor RP) The same would be true of an elf who was friendly with a dark elf.

I know you folks didn't like the idea of the THINK channel, but that allowed for characters to be dissembling with each other and still allow the imms to know the purpose of their actions.

It created another level of RP.

Organizations in the environment also grew in leaps and bounds because the players in those organizations, were now being filled with more RP conscious characters.

And that really should be the goal, how do we create an environment that is both balanced and tactically sound, but also encourages and promotes RP.

It starts really, by giving RP value to players both viscerally (the engendered feelings/perceptions) and pragmatically (that they will not be penalized by NOT keeping up with the other players who are playing for the tactical aspect of the game).

I would also highly suggest that there be a consideration for some RP immortals who lead story lines through the game. Create for them the tools to take over NPC's, rename / summon objects (for quest rewards). Create world effects, create room effects, etc. They may already exist, I know, but that level of immersion that exists outside player control just adds to the thrill everyone will feel and organizations must strive to deal with, etc.

Anyway I put these out as food for thought. The key point here is to give RP it's due, and create a system where excellent RP is rewarded.

Make it toggle:

DIPLOMAT ON = Bonuses/Penalties applied. Summon/Gate disabled.

Corrected so that I can quote for truth.

Lulz.

Are you two playing the same game? I know Baldric isn't, but Lykofos . . . you should know that there are few people who give a damn about what you're Roleplaying and will happily just ROFLSTOMP the opposition without anything more than a hunch that they're involved.


As for secrecy and abusing the diplomat code to figure out who's in what faction, the Diplomat should be considered a public position. It would, in essence, make it easier for others to fly under the radar.

Ideally, the risk/rewards with this proposed system would make it so that complete useless ninnies aren't rewarded with lasting leadership: You'll want actual diplomatic diplomats and competent generals that can communicate with them for the good of the organization.