Shattered Kingdoms

Hi,

As a new player here that has come from another mud (all be it played awhile ago). I wanted to find out the reasons behind the 1 cabal/tribunal per person regardless of characters. My reasons for asking this is the game I used to play didn't restrict this (although no one person could lead more then one tribunal), with a few exception like no one could be in a conflicting tribunal eg: Midnight/Hammer.

A few things that this game had that this one doesn't may have affected this decision:
1. Players were instantly deleted by admin for any sign of abuse/multi-playing/OOC knowledge.
2. The player base was very strict on using knowledge and treated people like crazy if they showed knowledge that they shouldn't (and in one instant I was ejected instantly from a clan because of this).

Here's what I found it enabled in the game:
1. Characters were able to have a completeness about them that my second characters in this game would be unable to have.
2. It increases the pool of characters able to join tribunal/cabals, increasing conflict, roleplay, interaction and playing options.
3. It was easier to do roleplay events as players were generally available from each of the organisations you needed for a player run event.
4. With muds having an ever dwindling player base globally, this is a way to increase character numbers, participation and consequently enjoyment across the board.

I'm not saying I want the rule changed. If it works and it ain't broken, it's not really a problem.

However, for the reasons stated above, I think it doesn't harm the game to allow it and in fact under certain conditions, enhances the game.

I'm growing to really enjoy this game and this has been the one little bug bear I have had since joining your player base.

I would love others thoughts plus perhaps reasons why this couldn't work.

Jayvan

1: I don't believe people can act IC as if they did not know OOC info. For that reason I share my IC lied OOCly.
2: Being in multiple factions, you would be better able to manipulate your "alt faction" with your "main factions" using insider information.
3: There already is enough of a problem with people deleting and remaking toons, I believe this will make the problem worse.
4: Sometimes people want to keep there affiliation secret, this would hinder that.

I agree... These are problems that did happen in the other game.

To summarise though, you want to make rules for the 1-5% of the player base that cheat (and will cheat regardless) and not the 95-99% of the game that want a great RP game..

More specifically:
1: If the ooc info doesn't affect the game does it really matter?
2. Specifically relates to the small population that would cheat and the good players (from what I've seen a good percentage of the player base) would keep their characters seperate. Plus with a restriction on leadership it should not affect to greatly.
3. Can't stop it all ready why should it stop this?
4. Comes back to punishing bad RP'ing from people using insider info from OOC and bringing IC.

All your points are based around bad roleplay/cheating/annoying practices. All of which all ready happen in this game, would it make it worse... or perhaps the same players will just keep doing the same things and the rest of the player base will have more complete characters...

Probably barking up the wrong tree anyway. I assume this will never change and I'm just airin a minor grievance with the game.

Jayvan

You are probably right.

It is not about people WANTING to cheat, its about cheating because they can't stop cheating.

If you have someone who rolled a darkie priest, decided to hide his alignment and pretend to be from some random dead lightie religion. If that person decides to go all in and tires to get into a lightie faction, well I would say anyone from that lightie faction who happens to know the priest is really evil and is just trying to set everyone up will not willingly go to die. I believe a MAJORITY of the playerbase will have something to do at that moment, not have any valuable loot at BEST. At worst he will oppose that priest because he has some sort of odd feeling about him, or find a reason to argue with that priest.

The point is, if everyone is allowed to know the affiliation of everyone, then you would not have the ability to lie. because people can't help themselves and put in the OOC knowledge by making up some IC reason.

That particular problem can actually already happen as there are no restrictions on religious affiliation. A player can have chars in two rival religioins, such as Dulrik and Thuban, and so can still use OOC info to spoil such a scenario. I would at least think having multiple chars in the same faction could't cause too many troubles, and generally speaking allied factions wouldn't normally, but it wasn't that long ago that there was some major tension between the Peacekeepers and Hammer. It might be nice but it could pose some problems, but in the end I just don't see this as a changing ever.

It was an example.

It is hard enough to keep your affiliation a secret. If people were allowed to join multiple factions, you would be assured that once you got in, everyone knew.

I think one of the reasons might just be to keep your main your main, because sometimes it's a lot more desirous to log off of your main cabal'ed character in order to avoid someone who is trying to PK them.

Also, as to your first point Jayvan, while the admin doesn't make a habit of punishing people for abuse of OOC information in accord to areas of the game, anyone who multiplays most certainly loses both characters on the spot.

I think this is a good reason, mainly because it would be easy to blend the OOC and IC together if you noticed that every time you logged on, someone logged off of their cabal character allied with yours and then logged onto their cabal character at odds with yours. That, and I personally think it's better to have a smaller base of consistent characters as opposed to a larger base of erratic characters.

Of course, there's nothing stopping you from having as many alts as you want, though, if you're looking to see "all sides" of the game, save the mysterious elusive cabal skills/spells.

I don't know that we have the IMM base to stop the cheating that would inevitably occur.

One thing that could go a loooong way is by enforcing a 1 character per account (ie person) rule and making GM ten-twenty times more difficult to attain from master-->GM. It should be preferable to gain xp through rewards for RP then it is to mindlessly grind.

Then its all solved! Besides, its something I think dulrik wants anyways and would lead to people keeping characters much, much longer.