Shattered Kingdoms

That would be totally inappropriate. I'm not going to compare/contrast information like that. My above post was supposed to make you think about how you yourself and other players besides yourself enjoy this game, not invite the sort of flippant response that you are so adept at posting.

You must get a lot of satisfaction from shooting your big mouth off.

Anyway, that's the end of my responses here. Sorry I couldn't be more constructive. Interesting thread, though.

Rock on, SK.

In response to some of Dulrik's current directions:

- Keep oathbreaker flag for cabals but not tribunals.

If the oathbreaker flag is good for cabals, why isn't it good for tribunals? Joining a trib is going to be harder when the leader can't reasonably assume loyalty to the organization - to the extent that an applicant may have to join a friendly cabal first.

- Tribunals can bring guards into an enemy kingdom if at war.
- Tribunals can bring guards into Uxmal if at war with any other kingdom.

This gives tribunals a HUGE mechanical advantage for declaring war on at least one kingdom. We have enough "just because" wars without directly rewarding them! (In a RP game, I expect wars to be intense fights for realizable IC goals. Granted, I should also expect lots of PK in a PK game. How about a "hostile" diplomatic status to express factional skirmishes short of war?)

Worse, tribunals aren't particularly balanced. Nation characteristics have rightly taken precedence over fairness. That's fine when tribunal powers are overwhelmingly used for defense. But if trib NPCs become major faction PK tools, that's another matter. Also, won't high-level monsters be much easier to kill with tribunal NPC assistance? The Necropolis, for example, is in Uxmal....

I think there's room in SK for essentially defensive organizations. There's also a story-advantage in keeping relative peace between nations. What worthwhile role do PCs have in a battle between large armies?

I think applying a charge for wars could cause the thought of going to war with another country expensive enough to not do it unnecessarily or on a permanent basis. The cost of war is basically what could allow you to go on the offensive and transport your guard NPCs through the target kingdom and Uxmal. Uxmal couldn't be the target of a war ever, but will always be the stomping grounds in the middle.

On top of the charge for war there would also be an increased cost due to the increased loss of bounty NPCs in your kingdom. I'd even say the number of wars you wage should increase at an exponential rate if its more than one kingdom you battle. If both groups had their NPCs and similar numbers the defensive team will generally win because of the bounty NPC advantage and the greater number of posted guards in the city. I think its good to make tribunals more exciting. Let cabals become more behind the scenes driving forces, but the tribunals exist as something representing the government of kingdoms. The cost of war would probably aid in economy as well, as long as you had money to wage war on.

A

Archie, as it stands right now that if this is being thought up hard about. Ayamao does not share a border with Uxmal and would require the boundry be redrawn.

then we will see people like mitch and peso take over tribunals declare unrelenting war on another nation untill all the tribunals money is gone...delete and do it to another place...

OVT, stop it. I find myself agreeing with you, again . Otherwise, spoken for Truth.

Does that really matter at all? They'd do it anyways.

testtesttest

Umm...yeah...jumping into this thread 37 pages later so there's no wayt i'm going back to read them all. If I'm repeating previous ideas, I didn't read it the first time, so I'm not really repeating it from my POV.

First off, the best way I can see to handle this would be to make everyone join a tribunal first, and then get promoted to the 'elite' forces of the cabals. Players would keep their tribunal abilities and have the cabal's abilities added once they're promoted. For the MC, add something like a commander skill, or foray, or something that means they get to take their troops out of the country, since there are already Imperial troops wandering in a lot of places they 'shouldn't be'.

My only question would be would the Harlequins then be able to join THREE groups? Since they have no tribunal, it would seem to make sense that they could be recruited by a foreign tribunal and then be promotoed to the local cabal to avoid blowing their cover as a spy or what have you. Would make the Harlequins insanely overpowered though, so if that's the way to go, then some Harlie powers would end up leaving, which I don't like the idea of. Option two would be to make the thieves guild a 'tribunal' since that's the closest thing to law Teron has. Instead of controlling the obvious guard NPCs, they would get to control any NPC rogues/bards across the realms with leadership.

Option three - New Teron tribunal:

Council of guilds
Leadership - PCs may command NPCs of the class of the corresponding guild - mercenaries guild members would be able to control mercenaries and barbarians, thieves guild would get to control rogues and bards, Torrum members would get to control two out of Sorcerors(good), warlocks(neutral) and necromancers(evil) based on their alignment (good control good and neutral, evil controls evil and neutral, neutral characters control warlocks and have only 50% success rate with sorcs and necros). Or something like that...The CoG would have 3 leaders - one from each guild.

Probably going to curse option three by saying this but I thought I'd mention that I got the idea while looking at a map of Calimport from the Forgotten Realms DnD setting. The whole city is broken down by guild boundaries, etc. with a great many more guilds and since Teron is kinda like that.......

Stopping here so I don't start rambling more than I have - go ahead and cheer

Except Mitch rarely plays a character long enough for a pr0n scene to finish, let alone complete a take-over of a cabal/tribunal.

Now that I got my joke out of the way, it's ALOT harder than you think it is to actually usurp leadership on the ESSKAY. If it wasn't you'd have seen alot more leaders back in the day when there were enough people to fight over them.

Yeah, takeovers arent my thing. I'd rather have leadership guaranteed to me before I even create the character.