Shattered Kingdoms

With such limited choices, people are going to get tired of the same thing. I mean why not try it. I think this could be a GRP that many people might like. Have the hand attempt to return and maybe the guardians arise too to try to stop them idk, as I wasn't playing when they were eliminated but I'd like to see more choices than just peacekeepers and Legion. (for dark and light aura) The talons everytime I have played have always been light leaning. Not to say they havn't supported dark aura once and a while I just have never seen it.

I'd be alright being in a tribunal with just one or two people and try to get more but if it doesn't happen then just have to rely on allies if you have them.

I'm with Tragonis on it. I do not see what we have to lose by trying and I think we have enough people passionate about the idea to lend a hand in rebuilding one or the other or both. For me personally, goa and BH are my favorite tribunals and the more options players have, the more attractive the game can be.

As funny as I find it, I have to agree with staff on this one, and say you guys are being at least mildly ridiculous.

[Edit by Algorab: We don't need to impugn the character of other players to express disagreement with an idea.]

Don't bring these tribunals back.

FWIW, the Guardians was hands-down my favorite tribunal. I hated the thought of closing it down, but as overall numbers were in decline and we agreed to test the funnel theory, it was the most logical tribunal to shut down along with the Hand, despite being one of the most active tribunals.

The decision to shut down the tribunals was premeditated. The storylines associated with that action were not, and were open to a lot of possible different directions to carry it out. Neither were "GRP" events requiring universal involvement, though the players who were involved in the Guardians were extremely motivated to carry the RP into the larger world, and admittedly it did, in some ways, force people to involve themselves who didn't want to. Most of the Sith-related RP was on the fly, developing in real-time and in response to the choices and actions of the characters who involved themselves. To this day it still saddens me that players who chose to participate were also brutally hounded and bullied by some players who dislike me, disliked the RP, and disliked the players involved. It's a shame that some of those people chose to leave the game permanently, and a personal regret that I didn't handle everything to the best of my ability throughout. Early in that RP I was really unorganized, and so I tried to change some things around to improve communication, to improve coordination, and to improve organization. This led into the Ayamao v Empire via Grahme's War of Independence. There were a lot of tests/experiments and lessons learned in this event, and despite some mistakes along the way, I still think was overall a success. Of course, there are staff and players alike who would stake claims on both sides of that assessment.

The way I closed the Guardians, it was always my hope that the faction could still be used in some future organized RPK event (this is something I've not given up on, btw), or that it could easily be re-opened if player counts ever reached the point to support it. I don't know if I can imagine the latter coming true (though I'd love to see numbers climb like that again), but the former is certainly possible if there were ever player support to try that type of thing again. If there were, I'd make a LOT of organizational changes from the Grahme War, and I'd try to work it more like a stand-alone D&D campaign than a mandatory "GRPK" as the last one was perceived.

Of course, being currently inactive with no foreseeable opportunity to increase my activity means that this will likely always remain a pipe-dream in my head and just another idea that never gets tested or implemented.


tl;dr: I hear you. I loved the Guardians (and the Hand). I wish we had the playerbase to support their revival.

Stuffs been deleted since I started this post, but, anyway.

Another good reason to have an additional Lightie and Darkie tribunal is that not all players and KDs are going to mesh sufficiently well. Some folks don't want to play together for purely OOC reasons, fine. Others have irreconcilable differences with the IMM leading their tribunal on IC matters, like the boundaries of acceptable RP for a light-aura character.

These disagreements are just a fact of life. But if a person finds themselves in that situation, they have little opportunity to reroll the same aura. And if several players want to leave a faction due to same reason, then the other inevitably takes them in and outnumbers the other. Another choice could help ameliorate this.

Follow-Up:

For those who aren't familiar with what happened, the Guardians are actually still intact, they've just become extremely xenophobic under the oversight of King Felgaros, who endured the rebellion of the centaurs of Grahme against the Alliance, and who, at best felt like the outside world turned their backs on the elves in their time of greatest need, and who at worst believes the outside world actively opposed them. But law & order still remains active in the Ayamao Alliance though it's been closed to outsiders and immigrants.

I wasn't playing then, but I'm sorry to hear all of this, honestly. There seems to be a tendency towards a level of vitriol that is unwarranted for something that is supposed to be fun, and that sucks.

The funnel didn't seem to work, so maybe it's worth trying something new. I'm afraid we missed our chance with the short-lived revival, but maybe some of that interest that tapered off after May can be rekindled.

Me and another player (who isn't not playing right now!) would be up for rolling GoA toons.

On the topic of the closing of Sith'a'neil.
I believe there is a misconception between the Tree Rot Storyline, which was the closing of Sith, and the Battle for Grahme's Independence.
The Tree Rot had to do with the Crucible poisoning the Tree and I think Kirlin used the Earth Orb to slow the rot and turn portions to stone. I'm pretty sure that this was the main storyline that lead to the Guardians closing up shop.
The Battle in Graham was an Imperial Ruse to begin conquorering actual territory (in a coded way). We said that we were fighting for Grahme's independance to try and get them to join some Federation of Centaurs with the centaurs of Shinlaken. The real motive was to drive out the Ayamaon forces and create imperial territory in Ayamaon lands. We were also promised a portal from Shinlaken to Graham, but that was something that was never actually coded in, and I think it should be.

I am part of the group of people that thought the Grahme GRP was, despite a couple of learn-as-you go moments, an awesome GRP.
The level of RP that I put into diplomacy was something not everyone seen. I, as Azoreth, spoke with damn-near every faction in the game and explained ICly what was going on. I gained their support and forged alliances. Alliances that I might have not normally forged. But I persuaded people that we were actually doing good to liberate the Centaurs from the oppressive rule of Ayamao. Heavy player-driven RP? Check. We got points for having more allies. It was incentive to RP, and I did a lot.

Next was the Losache or King Warparty raid. People complain about coordinated logins. And yeah. We said "Alright everyone be here in seventeen days." or something like that. There wasn't any YIM "Hey it's time to log in" coordination. But that's neither here nor there. The point is that you had to get your large formation to go and take on some high-ish end PVE each weak, which also granted points each week. These raid-like events were a lot of fun. We had no other reason to attack the war party and the "king party"(?) except for gaining points. It gave us a weekly challenge to achieve.

Lastly was the weekly PVP battle in Grahme. This is where a couple of things got murky. There was a couple of stand-offs, which led to "Whomever holds this position as time expires wins this week." This could use some tweaking. But overall, these were nearly 9v9 battles and was some of the most fun that I've ever had in SK PVP.

The outcome of the Battle for Grahme was that the area within and immediately surrounding Grahme was changed from Ayamaon Territory to "unowned" Territory. It should have been Imperial Territory at that point, but again. Besides the point. The outcome was only used to further justify RP behind the King and the Guardians being in hiding, as stated above by Yed. The outcome for Grahme was not pre-determined. That all was player-driven and people who were not a part of the Imperial side argue that it was a terrible GRP because they lost. If one takes a moment to look objectively, the GRP for Grahme had all aspects that make for great SK. They just should have worked harder. They should have RP'd to get more allies. They should have brought more allies to fight in Grahme.
I wasn't given any extra information, to my knowledge, that the Guardians didn't. The difference is that I obtained information ICly that these events were happening and I worked hard to ensure that we'd come out on top. There was poor coordination and leadership on the Guardian's side.
My ending argument is that the GRP was well-created, despite a couple of unforseen flaws.

I believe that a GRP of this scale, with player-driven variables, would be the only way to re-implement the tribunals.
If Dulrik wants to entertain the idea of bringing back the tribunals, I think Yed would need to help create another Grahme-like event.
I'd be willing to give my input on how we can create something like Grahme.


TL;DR: Grahme GRP wasn't why the Guardians shut down. Not pre-determined outcome.
A GRP on the scale of the Grahme GRP would be the only way to re-implement the tribunals. (IMO)

|

Thanks for taking the time to type that up, I wasn't super familiar with the event, but between you and Yed's post I definitely feel more informed on the topic.

Actually, there was never a plan to create Imperial territory in Ayamaoan lands. The Centaur Federation is an RP concept that has existed in-game since SK inception (read: help centaur). The goal was never to add Imperial territory, but to introduce the option to break Ayamaoan Alliance (something I tried to do as a player 18 years ago) by fueling the Federation and increasing ties between Grahme & Shinlaken. However, I think I didn't explain that as clearly to the Empire side at the beginning, and the Imperial side rolled surprisingly well with the clarification when pointed out. The portal from Shinlaken to Grahme also encountered some friction and was not implemented, though the Empire was given a trade representative in Grahme who resides there to this day.

The Tree Rot storyline and the Battle for Grahme were very close in time proximity and there were a lot of ties in the roleplay, both of which played a large contributing role toward the closing of Ayamao, the rise in elf-centaur hostilities, and Grahme's secession.



There's any number of roleplay ideas that could contribute to reopening the closed tribunals if it's judged beneficial to re-open them. Personally, I really don't think we have the playerbase to support the number of factions we have at present.

However, I believe that by having two vacant factions, we have the perfect situation to create another faction war event if there's ever sufficient interest. I've had a number of ideas that I've pondered:
1) Link the [Hand] tribunal to the deep-elves of Ch'zzrym, rename as needed. Create a war event that players can choose if they want to fight for the elves or the deep-elves and run a campaign pitting the two factions against each other.
2) Link the [Hand] tribunal to the centaurs of Grahme, rename as needed. Create a successor war to the original war of Independence. Do the centaurs maintain independence? Are they brought back into the Ayamao fold? Are they conquered/annexed by the Empire?
3) Link the [Hand] tribunal to the deep-elves, orcs, and nasties in the mountains between Ayamao & Taslamar, rename as needed. Create a war to conquer this mountain territory. Do the elves keep it? Do the deep-elves take it? Do the Taslamarans conquer it?
4) Link the [Hand] tribunal to an alliance between the Thieves' Guild and the Mercenaries' Guild in Teron. They unite to resist an invasion attempt by the Empire. Or they try to throw Exile or Nerina into chaos.
5) Repurpose the [Hand] tribunal to an upstart rebel faction based in Everclear who tries to overthrow the Keepers and wage a civil war against the Queen. Or a rebel faction based in Seaside/ Seawatch/ N'Kashya/ Tlaxcalla/ Shinlaken/ A'van who tries to overthrow the Legions/Emperor, or at least to declare independence for their city state.
6) Repurpose the [Hand] tribunal for a large-scale campaign to reunite the Northern Wastes under a new king.

In every scenario that I consider in this context, I always think of it as a temporary tribunal opening, specifically for the purpose of playing this specific campaign event, which may result in changing of political boundaries, the re-writing and re-describing of various sections of territory in towns and/or wilderness areas, replacement of existing NPCs, and conversion of participating PCs into permanent NPCs in affected territories. I'd like to think that we could even create some options for creation in such an event that might temporarily open up the ability for advanced enlistment (say, you create your soldier starting at level 10 with membership in the associated tribunal), possibly with TEMPORARY options to create as a soldier/hunter (NPC-only classes) or maybe even as an orc or lizardman (NPC-only races). I think of them as campaigns that would run independently with specific start/end dates, a clear set of guidelines for participating and rules for conduct/ scoring/ winning, and a combination of rewards for associated characters and their players. For instance, your character might be a lackluster member of the tribunal, but maybe he ends up as a prison guard NPC at the end, or maybe your character was a clear leader, maybe he ends up as the governor NPC of a city. Likewise, maybe the player receives X-many LT for their participation while the other players receive double LT for winning.

For me personally, I'd be interested to come back to a more active status for the purpose of running a campaign like this, but knowing first-hand how quickly it can spiral out of control/expectation, I would only want to do it with very clear public guidelines and only if there was significant interest to warrant the time investment that must go into anything of that nature.