Shattered Kingdoms

This might be the place to discuss something that might be a directional change for tribunals. What if tribunals were not aura based organizations? That is to say that it would be allowed to let the tribunals be more gray organizations. I think in the past the goal was to keep the tribunals in a certain pattern. If tribunals allowed more realistic servants of the law, I believe that it would be more interesting. As it is, tribunals somehow predicate their existence on taking a side in the aura conflict that exists in the game. I believe this was because people wanted the number of light, gray, and dark factions to be equal. Perhaps the game would benefit from moving to a more gray bias based on tribunals being less exclusive. This would allow the few truly light aura organizations to be more independent of the political scene. If tribunals worked to get out from under the influence of the basis of aura, I think that the true role of tribunals would be seen.

Its very difficult to play a light aura'd member of a tribunal and try to actually keep the peace in any kingdom. It makes you a target. If all the tribunals were more gray organizations at heart, with some flavors of light and dark, I think they would see more use. Warfare and justice are not really good or evil at heart. I believe that legal organizations should be less biased that way to allow for the difficulties of actually taking sides that cannot be upheld.

I guess I'm not saying I'd allow all sorts of randomness. I might in an experiment allow an aberrant to lead the Keepers, Talon, or Guardian. I'd certainly wish to see membership of more unprincipled and dogmatic characters. That's not to say scrupulous and principled characters or interpretations aren't welcome, but they need not be the only direction for these organizations. I think I could allow a slightly flexible leader if they kept the kingdom afloat. Its how it works in real life government. It takes all kinds. Let cabals be the bastions of idealistic visions. Let tribunals turn their focus to a more governmental role with less influence by their cabals. Perhaps tribunals should consider cabals their enemies. In the past I might have been against such a direction, but I know that we should let tribunals have something. If we give them more freedom to choose their direction, perhaps they would be more fun.


tl;dr I think its time to move away from the basis of aura in tribunals. Light aura is only one shade of justice and warfare. Tribunals are not defined by aura. I'm open to people trying new directions for tribunals where I haven't before.

I like that idea Achernar. Some the best RP I have had, has been with the Talons as the leader of the Light aligned Cabal the Fists and dealing with their gray aura tendencies. I think it is a good move to move tribunals and kingdoms away from the notion of auras and leave that to religions and Cabals.

I also think that if Tribunals had a gain/loss in something, it would foster more PK between the kingdoms. Maybe control border keeps, that give a trade/economic and xp bonus (bonanza) to the kingdom that controls all the ones on their borders?

This is almost exactly the vision I worked towards during my tenure as a transitional tribunal leader. I am proud of what I was able to watch happen and facilitate, and the Talon had a blast treating a cabal as its enemy for a time. The Talon is lead by a dogmatic and a scrupulous now, and believe it or not I made one or two moves of my own, risking my character concept, to make it that way.

That being said, it only worked because everyone involved was on board and lucky.

You've likely seen us hash it out elsewhere, but I'll restate the point here: when it comes down to it, tribunals have no way to stand up to a cabal without getting outside help. They cannot keep relics. They can only banish in a reactionary setting. All their allies who defend their home turf risk being imprisoned, fined, and negatively impacted even in a victory scenario.

Tribunals are crippled by the system to be unable to stand on their own against a dedicated assailant -- including the more popular player-run organizations in the game, their friends must accept unstable levels of collateral damage, and the "home field" advantages lead to tribunal warfare exactly where every staff-based opinion I've seen on the matter suggests it should be moved away from. There is no resource that makes tribunal victory something other groups could be motivated to take interest in. There are unclear definitions of both tribunal purpose and success.

As said earlier in the thread, tribunals simply are not "taken seriously." These are some of the reasons why.

From the hypothetical position of the Fist and the Talon interaction, the best diplomatic relation for the Fists is that of "savior" to the Talon, calling in any favor of tribunal leadership with the ever-present threat of withdrawing support. In the purest of Machiavellian senses, tribunal leadership is doomed to impotency when it must rely on the leadership of other organizations to effect a lasting change.

The only stand-alone tribunal solution of slaying enemies immediately and ruthlessly has been criticized many times in and out of the game as abusive, as ridiculous, and as a far cry from an enriched roleplay experience.

I thought a tribunal would be like playing risk mixed with monopoly. Instead, the current toolkit is more like playing counterstrike mixed with stepmania. It takes a lot -- more than should be asked of players -- to turn that kind of situation around.

It would be fun and there are people who would be interested in playing out your suggestion, I can speak to that from personal experience, but if the game itself will only provide challenges rather than resources, you've got a hard sell ahead of you.

What can the game offer to help the players embrace this exciting and dynamic experience?

Cool thread. There seem to be three related but separate things being discussed:
1) Tribunal power relative to cabals
2) Tribunal aura restriction/ historical bias
3) Autonomy/ control available to tribunal members

I think the most important topic to address is the third, but just quickly on the first two...

1) Tribunal power relative to cabals
I don't think tribunals are at a disadvantage relative to cabals. While their guards are confined geographically to home and warring nations, having a GM NPC to stick in front of you does wonders, particularly for certain classes. They also have free buffs. In addition, a tribunal can never have their powers taken away from them like a cabal can. IMO the reason cabals are more populated than tribunals is that a) cabals are just generally more interesting and have more history behind them and 2) in certain cabals you can largely stay out of PK. If you're in a tribunal, you're pretty much SOL.

2) Tribunal aura restriction/ historical bias
I think it would be interesting to "open up" some of the tribunals to non-traditional auras, but I don't think this is a very big issue. Most tribunals currently allow some latitude in member selection anyway.

3) Autonomy/ control available to tribunal members
IMO, this is the #1 issue to be addressed in SK right now. Grep spelled out the problem well - the tribunal is expected to carry out the law but given no real authority to do so. Joe the murderer has killed 47 people, turned himself in and cleard his name. He's now threatenig the life of the tribunal leader and the leader can put in place no preventative measures.

On the other hand, it sucks to be banished. You're blocked from buying anything from the country, some bounty NPCs are overpowered and all-seeing/knowing/ethereal, and the banishment is indefinite. It would suck even more to have this happen to you for no reason (which was what was happening to people in the free reign days of deathmark). For the newer players, you used to be able to deathmark anyone for any reason. People just deathmarked anyone who even sounded like they might be an enemy. Some were punished for lack of RP, but the system was eventually changed.

My suggestions (and most of this is neither new nor my own):
* Allow tribunal members to banish whoever they want (within bounds of RP, of course), BUT
* Remove bounty NPCs entirely (buffing any tribunals guards that are currently being "propped up" by their corresponding bounty NPCs)
* Either restrict the total number of banishments than can be maintained by each country or impose some kind of ongoing cost on each banishment.
* NPC guards from warring nations entering enemy territory are attacked on sight.
* (Optional) Set up mechanisms by which players could deceive shopkeepers into doing business with them even when banished.

Thoughts?

can we get a tl;dr on grep and jhorleb's posts

They were too long. I didn't read them.

Jhorleb I wonder if it's possible to have a 'non-partial' immortal to manually set banishment on players, after the roleplaying has been done in place.

For example, it would be very similar to setting religion flags on players. Often roleplaying would have been there before so and so are set as high priest/follower.

If a particular villain has been griefing a country over and over, maybe the leaders of that tribunal can petition for them to be banished, through the monarch, or something.

Monarch here being immortal.

(This however does open up the topic of favoritism etc so it is probably a slippery slope but an alternate idea.)

Achernar has already replied in two threads in public forums and at least one more in trib forums that if a strong case can be presented by the tribunal leaders, he is willing to manually set banishment status to a non-criminal, with some charge on the trib coffer.

Specifically, he also said that this has been in effect for quite some time, but no leader has ever approached him about it. So, the system is there. Even temporarily. It just needs more typing than "trib banish XXXXX" and some actual effort from a leader to justify the reasons behind a banishment.

alright coo

i don't read every post, guess i missed that one

but good to see option's there

You are so hot sometimes, min. Here you go:





Next time, use your manners! Say please!

As for Banishment...

Banishment is a flawed concept. It is too severe for tribunal leaders to be entrusted with handing out at will, yet at the same time, it does not happen automatically. It is easily avoided through surrender, easily given with zero roleplay provided conditions are right, and every possible position relative to banishment is fraught with complaints. Leaders complain that it is too stringent to assign. Criminals complain that it is too harsh to suffer.

There is no clear definition on the purpose of banishment. A tribunal leader is left to write that definition herself. With this lack of a paradigm, the system never amounts to more than piecemeal attempts to throw buckets of water at incendiary situations.

If tribunals are supposed to have control over the state of the legal system in their kingdoms, give them banishment at will. If they are not, do not give them banishment at all.

The developments I've heard about (parole being a prime example) come not out of a premeditated development cycle but instead out of reactionary patches to abusable situations. The theme here with tribunals is that the code has not made up its mind on what they are supposed to be doing.

Tribunals have a lot more development put into them than cabals, according to some posts around here. This means that the project management issues in their implementation will be more pronounced. More development does not automatically mean better development.

No offense to anyone.