Shattered Kingdoms

I still think the best solution for Tribunals, is to give them some sort of give/take like in Risk and allow dual membership of Cabals and Tribunals. If you give Tribunals incentive to PK, like with Control Towers, that give their citizens buffs or something, then I think you will see a massive increase in the use of this part of the game. It will also give Tribunals some leverage over their own citizens and the cabals acting within their borders. You better believe, that if I was a cabal leader, I would be way more ready to listen to a tribunal leadership, if they can offer my younger members something like an xp buff from control towers. Right now, what reason do Cabals have to even listen to what a Tribunal has to say?

Once you have a higher percentage of use, then you can worry about how to fix the "problems". Cause right now, who wants to waste code time fixing something that only a fraction of the player base use?

Those ideas are more substantive than many of my own, and you put a finger on the problem I've been having trouble expressing: the catch-22 of getting these changes on board.

No one wants to play with a misfit toy, but no one wants to fix up a toy that isn't played with all the same. The problem is self-sustaining: one should want to strike while the iron is hot, but the forge cannot run off of waiting.

Somewhere in the equation someone has to make an investment. I did, but I don't think it should be entirely thrust upon the players to make these things work out. No one player is strong enough, free enough, or even important enough to make up for missing reagents.

The ingredients are primed for some sort of catalyst from above to really improve things.

I'm interested in knowing what is on their drawing boards, and I think an awareness of an intent to work with tribunals will help motivate people to play with them all the same.

I must say for once, I do agree with you here.

As a relatively new player (like... a week?) I'm curious as to what you are talking about? From a game perspective... what ARE the goals of the Cabals? It just seems, to me, like a clan for player killing. Is there some benefit? I was told something about the economy being affected by tribunals. But really... there isn't anything out there for me to try and grok.

The tribunals I understand, they are police. The cabals... just seem like... pk groups, what do they do?

The word cabal comes from the French language, originally a word meaning "intrigue" or "society," and is taken from the term kabbalah, which refers to the ancient Hebraic mysticism. So, cabals are basically societies of membership with a certain ideology uniting them. What do they do?

Well, what does your local freemason chapter do? It works like that. Plus CRS.

As for tribunals, its not clear whether they're supposed to be police, judges, or even barristers. Each kingdom has its own flavor on it based on what characters bring to the jam session, but all too often, the current system takes would-be barristers and places them behind a guard NPC in an inn working as a barrista.

The word tribunal suggests a certain station, as in the head of a tribe or the seat of a magistrate. There is little connotation on what the purpose or presentation of a tribunal is, beyond the use of the word to refer to a judiciary body.

I could just imagine the freemasons going to capture some flag from another secretive group. There's an epic back and forth there because freemasons never could build without their sacred keystone.

Masons versus Elks. Go!

The purpose of cabals is to provide players additional opportunities for rp and pk although they are more geared towards rp (IMO). You'll receive opportunities for rp in a cabal that you won't get anywhere else in the game. It's also there for people that don't want to be a law person but still want to be a part of an organization or group. All the cabals in this game are not necessarily secretive.

{edit} To answer the question "What do they do?", each cabal has a different 'mission' or set of goals that they are usually trying to accomplish.

Cabals are not mainly an "RP tool". They are a "PK Tool".

They are "secret" (or not-so, anymore) organizations that exist to promote conflict among groups. Each Cabal has a rich lore, and rich history for no other reason other than they have been around for years and had the chance to go through a lot of Imms and Player Leaders with inspiration, each adding a little nugget to the walls that is "Cabal Lore". That's all the reason why they are so "rich" in story as opposed to tribunals.

Each Cabal has a goal in life. For example, one might seek to bring the world in a balanced state, so that everything exist in accordance with Nature. While another seeks Enlightenment. A third one might wish to crush all darkness, ridding the world of all evil. On the opposite end, one cabunal(*) wishes to promote its rigid, organized order throughout the land, bringing them into their vision of absolute order and prosperity.

All of the above though, are so rich merely because some player and some Imm, at some point in a cabal's history, actually devoted time and effort in the cabal to create this rich story.

Tribunals on the other hand were implemented while the Cabals already possessed a very rich history behind them, to define them and guide their actions and the majority of the playerbase treated and still treats them as the "lawmen" of a land. They do not have that rich of a history behind them (compared to Cabals) because their scope is much more easier to define and much more compatible to everyday army, and police. When you hear of the Peacekeepers or the Talon for example, you don't need additional information to piece together what it is they do. So, in extent, people don't devote that much time "writing" about what they do, in order to leave behind lore as deep as a cabal's.

BUT! Both Cabals and Tribunals, code-wise and mechanics-wise have one simple goal: Promote interaction between groups.

Because each cabal and tribunal requires its members to assume several viewpoints as their own, in order to belong in them, that interaction is most likely conflict. Either on the personal, physical, pk-them-to-the-dirt level, or the more social, political level. Whatever the case, since they promote interaction and since interaction invariably ends in violence in some way, they are tools for conflict.

That means, they are there to make sure people actually do a little organized, tactical PK from time to time, versus a group instead of simply ganking or solo-hunting.


(*): I borrowed that word from another poster. I loved it. A bit bored to look it up and see who wrote it, but... you're a Genius OP.

Is that what I'm supposed to be doing?