Shattered Kingdoms

Why the hell would you compare SK to Mortal kombat? :/
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Shut up, OVT. Your soul is mine.

It seems like the stripping of powers from cabals is unpopular, but I don’t suggest it for fun or to agitate anyone. I’ve suggested it because I see it as a solution to a couple of problems. With that said I will lay out a few of the goals I see and the problems in an attempt to explain why I’ve suggested what I have. Also note, I don’t claim that this is the only solution, just the only solutions I’ve come up with so far.

Goals:
A) Address player group inactivity without destroying current group RP.
B) Make tribunals more representative of a nation’s government/army (which means being the open/overt force).
C) Make cabal playability in line with secret societies (which means moving in the shadows).
D) Create a political atmosphere to complement the tactical atmosphere.
E) Set a direction for SK’s possible future expansion with national conflict.

Goal A - Dual membership addresses this by allowing every organization to exist while effectively increasing the available player base.

Possible problems
1) If cabals are too strong tactically they will end up as the dominate force, thereby effectively subjugating tribunals to their will. In essence, tribunals would be nothing more then a way to gather a power-up.
2) If characters are allowed to lead both a cabal and a tribunal, one organization will become no more then an extension of the other, effectively destroying one organization during such a leadership. It very likely would break down to merging as one leader passes off leadership of both to his second. There is also the conflict of interest, if a cabal ideals says a certain course of action be taken but that is contrary to the country’s interests.

Goal B – Dual membership in itself does not address this issue but implementing it would affect this greatly. Because members of cabals can join the ranks (as patriots or infiltrators) every cabal’s influence and power as a whole jumps significantly as well as individually. Note with the existence of secret societies, without dual membership there wouldn’t be a smooth interaction between them and therefore always indirectly competing making the whole system inefficient.

Possible problems
1) Allowing for tribunal jumping but not cabal jumping promotes much greater loyalty for cabals (note I’m not opposed to this under the right circumstances). Hence, characters are not loyal to the tribunal, meaning there is little in the way of reining in a dual member and tribunals take an even greater back seat to cabals.
2) Without tribunals having a significant tactical draw over cabals and a tactical uniqueness separating one tribunal from another, cabals will dominate tribunals effectively making cabals the focus and tribunals an after thought. Notice inconnection with the above problem this one becomes exaggerated to a much greater degree.
3) Without a way for tribunals to war with another tribunal, they are effectively impotent governments relegating them to police work only. This also prevents retaliation against nations that harbor enemies of the state.

Goal C – Granted this could happen without dual membership but for cabals to be truly secret societies they would suffer relative ineffectuality. With dual membership they have the potential to empower the cabal and its members to a far greater degree so long as they can be truly secret societies.

Possible problems
1) Without all powers being truly concealable, secrecy is impossible, hence defeating the goal. (Note: this includes the “XXX starts to concentrate” before one would cast a cabal spell)
2) OOC contacts leaking membership lists. I believe strong leaders and players realizing once one person leaks to you they will also leak about you. Hence, governing among players, but it is possible that doesn’t happen.
3) Becoming more selective is important because of being a secret society (note tribunals will be more accepting) but becoming too selective or even OOC cliquish runs contrary to playability of the entire game.


Goal D – Dual membership combined with goals B and C almost instantly accomplish this goal. Because secret societies will wish to influence the direction of nations, they will try to infiltrate. Hence tribunals should have patriots as well as information brokers and spies for multiple cabals.

Possible problems
1) If cabals are stronger or equal to tribunals tactically, there is no tactical motivation to put a tribunal above a cabal. Effectively tribunals become shells and nothing more then a power up, resulting in goal failure.
2) If tribunals aren’t significantly different (tactically) from one another, they become an almost homogeneous product that is easily interchangeable. Again, tribunals effectively become shells that act as cabal member power ups.
3) If a character is allowed to lead a cabal and a tribunal, all political intrigue is destroyed. Same thing happens if leaders are allowed to be members in other organizations (without leading both) just then the power is shared between two people.
4) If tribunals can’t go to war, there is no purpose to political maneuvering hence goal failure.
5) If cabal memberships aren’t really secret, political maneuvering can’t happen resulting in goal failure.

Goal E – Here I see a time where kingdoms will battle each other using the siege style that’s been set up in CRS. I also see rooms being destroyed and rebuilt as Cannibal suggested. And I see a way for kingdoms to capture land from other kingdoms and placements of outposts leading to strategic battles as well as tactical and political. There is no need to go into possible problems here as this is distant future in comparison to dual memebership.


Solutions:

Goal A problem 1 (A1), B1, B2, D1, and D2 all deal with the same basic problem, where the tactical (PK) power is coming from. Anyone who as played on SK long enough to know the truth that tactical concerns are of a paramount importance in the way this game is played and approached. The fact of the matter is, allowing dual membership gives characters the ability to be more powerful, but they also have more masters. The question then is (assuming the bump in power is acceptable) which master will dominate the other in the player’s mind. As long as cabals are greater, equal, or significantly close to equal in tactical power when compared to a tribunal, the cabal will be the dominate master a vast majority of the time (remember there is a significant power bump by allowing concealed cabal powers as well). Also, as long as one tribunal is tactically interchangeable with another, cabals will again be the dominate masters. Hence, tribunals need to compete for player loyalty by being tactically stronger then cabals and tactically differentiated to not be easily replaceable. This is why I suggested stripping two powers away from the cabals are redistributing them. This gives the tactical advantage to tribunals while making each different. Also note, cabals members gains significant power by now being able to use powers without revealing themselves and dual membership gives them access to all the powers they had before.

I want to spend a quick moment pointing out that the ability to use cabal powers secretly is a significant buff. Let’s take a hammer member and assume that the powers striped where the ones that start with the letter H and the letter C. This means he has one very nice spell to effect his damage out put that could be used all the time without anyone knowing, one defensive spell that benefits the same way, and one that would change as the offensive on did to buff his pet. Hence he could walk around with significant buffs and never give away his alliances. As one can see, secrecy alone is a major buff, so redistributing some powers isn’t wimping cabals so long as concealment is part of the deal.


A2 and D3 both have to do with the problem of leadership. As pointed out, if/when a person (or a couple of people) are allowed to take control of both a tribunal and a cabal, effectively there ceases to be two separate organization. Not only is problematic for the leader (conflicts of interest) but it is for the organizations (loss of identity), for playability as a whole (no intrigue effectively merging), and most likely unending connection without immortal intervention. Simple solution is to disallow leaders dual membership. It might be acceptable if only cabal leaders could be dual members (but not lead both) or vice versa. I would argue for cabal leaders being able to have dual membership (assuming the power striping) but then they would be subjecting themselves to the orders of the tribunal leader.

B3 and D4 deal with tribunals having the need to go to war. Without it, I pointed out that tribunals are basically impotent as governments/armies and nothing more then police. Simple solution is to allow soldier NPCs transported and used into countries at war with said tribunal. In the future I would hope these roles could be expanded but this small step does allow for war to happen.

C1, C2 and D5 are about the need for cabals to actually be concealed and secret. I inadvertently answered all of goal C’s problems in that section and thereby covered D5. Quick summary; cabals, their members, and the use of their powers need to be conceals.

Mamimi asked a very good question about why there had to be a stripping of powers and redistribution. I believe I’ve shown why tribunals must be the tactical focus for these goals to be successfully met. But that doesn’t mean the stripping and redistribution are required, it is just one solution. But I will say this, without stripping you must add a great amount of tactical power to tribunals to move them to the forefront. Which means that is a huge buff to dual members and basically required players to give up ideas of non-affiliation. I also pointed out the need for diversity among the tribunals, well the redistributing of powers accomplishes that. Even though I like the ideas nothingxs presents, it doesn’t offer any diversity among tribunals and I think most of those should be accessible by any character. Now there are other solutions I’m sure but this is what must be kept in mind: tribunals need to be diverse and the tactical focus while not buffing everything so much as to eliminate the being unaffiliated or solely affiliated as truly viable options.

Lei Kung

I'd like to see the power change to be restricted to a specific auto command or combined in with auto anonymous, or the anonymity expanded to cover cabal skill secrecy. If anything, keeping cabal skills 'secret' should cost additional ME or PE or whatever they cost for trying to keep them 'unseen'.

Make the leadership possible for both factions. Why only one?

And for a big twist: adding to tribunal diplomacy, add the ability to set trade levels.

Citizens get a 3% discount for buying from their own country.

Uxmal automatically accepts all better trade agreements (since it is wholly selfish), but since their economy is lacking to begin with, this may kill your own local economy. Most will keep Uxmal at restricted trade because Uxmal does have things people want, and aren't willing to pay 50% more for.

tribunal trade open <country>,
Would offer an open trade treaty between your country and another. This literally allows stronger economies to help weaker ones by "balancing" the economy between the two countries as time passes by. It also makes buying things between citizens of open trade nations less expensive (if you're from Nerina and Nerina has an open trade agreement with Exile, you can get things for a small amount less, maybe 5%).

tribunal trade restricted <country>,
Would be the "neutral" default trade stance. No discount, but the "balancing" effect is present here, albeit very, very slow.

tribunal trade embargo <country>,
Would be the "embargo" trade stance. Buying something from the country that is embargoing you costs 50% more. There is no economy balancing at all.

tribunal trade tax <1-3>,
Add a tribunal tax to all purchased goods of up to 3%. This tax is deposited at the end of every IC month to the coffers of the tribunal.

My problem with the current alliances is that some of them have remained unchanged since the start of the diplomacy system. This is despite the fact that leadership has turned over many times and probably no one who negotiated the actual alliances is still in either group. You can say that it makes sense for certain groups to be allied, but I want people to actually have to interact to keep that alive.

So the first idea would be that every time leadership changes hands, all alliances that faction has made would shift down to truce. New alliances would have to be negotiated. Alternatively you have my other proposal, that alliances cost money. If this is true, then I will want to give more benefits to having an alliance. What those would be, I'm not clear yet.

I don't want leadership to default to being more powerful than it is now. Allowing tribunals to take law enforcers into Uxmal at will would make the power much better than currently. The point of allowing them to be used in Uxmal during wars is mostly a matter of easy transportation. Uxmal also makes a perfect neutral ground for fighting wars between other kingdoms. But there's no point in declaring war on Uxmal itself unless there is a tribunal to defend it.

I do kind of like the idea of auto anonymous and then the abilities cost more. A possible compromise in the area of cabal abilities might be that if you also join a tribunal, you would lose access to two of the five abilities in the cabal. My concern there would be that then maybe people wouldn't bother to join tribunals, making the whole thing a waste of time. Disclaimer: These are just some ideas, not statements of intent.

If you're going to charge money, you might as well grant allied tribunals / cabals law immunity or protection from certain laws (imprisonment only, no monetary / equipment confiscation).

I realize this is going to sound really hypocritcal coming from me as my characters generally have a habit of blurring truth and being political machonists, but I like clearly defined allegiences.

I don't like the idea of a harlequin, a druid, a fist, and a hammer all in the same tribunal. That's going to make things bog down really bad and people will be forced to break an oath to one or the other at some point.

Example.

Take the keepers, they secretly have 2 harlequins, 3 druids, 4 hammer and 2 fists and a secret agent of the adepts in their ranks. Now the druids decide they want to ruin exile for some reason. Druids and harlequins are allies. You've got 5 people actively working from within the keepers to ruin the entire tribunal, you also have the adept doing whatever they can to screw it up. That gives you six people ruining the city from within plus 3 entire cabals, and only half the tribunal is willing to protect the city.

As much as the intrigue appeals to me at first, I honestly think it would ruin things. Sk has always been about clearly defined lines with alignment and oaths to cabals/tribunals.

I mean, lets say right now keepers only have 2 members. Me and 8 of my OOC buddies decide to join a cabal and then join the keepers. You're going to have us running an entire city for the purpose of that cabal as well as that cabal's normal actions. Then when one of us gets all QQ'y because someone won't let us have everything our way and delets and then we all get bored and delete, it hurts both factions tremendously.


What I do like is having it so that any cabal can join their normal tribunal as I've stated in a previous post (ie, talons with fist, hammer with keeprs ect ect. I like dulrik's idea that you can have dual membership but if you do you lose 2 of your cabal powers. I would also support harlequins being able to infiltrate any cabal since uxmal has no tribunal and that would be excellent harlie rp.

I like the idea of making cabal powers secret, but cost extra.

I would also support the complete melding of cabals with tribunals and no powers lost as long as MC got a new power.

I could go either way on letting leadership bring law NPCs out of the kingdom so long as those NPCs were limited to a certain level or perhaps everytime you left the border with a law NPC it cost a certain amount of gold based on level of that NPC for "away pay" or some other thing.

TheCannibal said it best.

Agreed.