Shattered Kingdoms

With the low numbers I think this kind of makes sense. Now I'm not saying you can have a character in the Hammer and a character in the Midnight Council. That is totally ridiculous, but say you have a darkie in the Council, why couldn't you have a grey aura character in the Druid? I don't see a large problem with this, just gives you more opportunity but that's my take. Is this something we could have happen?

I think there are multiple reasons why this would make a lot of sense.

1. Leadership/Challenges getting into a new cabal. There are several cabals at anytime that lack active leadership and/or deputies making it hard for characters to get into those cabals. Allowing for players to have 2 characters increases the number of members for each cabal ensuring more rp and gameplay opportunities as well as the opportunity to ensure continued access for new members.

2. Given the lower player numbers this also allows for players to not have so many times when if they log on their character they are the only light/dark aura character on. It simply makes the MUD more enjoyable and sustainable for players.

3. Part of the fun of the game is learning all the different race/class/cabal combos. This would allow for people to have a main character while also being able to learn/explore different aspects of the mud with test characters. Given that even a short lived character is a commitment of over a year if you play it out, its a very long commitment to play 6 characters to completion.

4. Multiple tribunals are already allowed and there are many players with characters in both the legion and peacekeepers, so why not multiple cabals?

I know the big concern is multiplaying via information transfer, but the reality is that the player count is low enough that the playerbase can police this extremely well already imho.

I believe the main reason why Cabals are limited to one per person is because your Cabal character is meant to be your main as they get a very significant boost in power for joining a cabal. They are the one that is most directly involved in the world because of this power.

Im going to pose a counter thought to each of Zathios points.
1 Having alts as leaders is collecting the decision power of the RP of SK into fewer hands as even if you deny leadership between them most leaders listen to accomplished characters. This is rarely a good thing, it increases the risk of multiplying rules being broken also reduces the risk of conflict as one person can not be logged into two characters which also increase the load on the Imms which is the last thing we need, also if the Imms need to enforce the rules then they come out looking like the bad guys.

2 Having alts doesnt mean that light dark numbers will be more even when you log in it is more likely to result in the exact other outcome which is people log into the character they can play with others leading to an overwhelming number of one side being online at a time encouraging even more people to log into that side. This makes the situation worse.

3 Yes and no. It is fun to test race class cabal combos but if they are just a test they are an alt do you want a throw away character leading a cabal.

4 Tribunal power levels are significant smaller than Cabal powers. Most of the Tribunal powers are convenience not power scaling. Tribunal is public which I look at as basically Im willing to actively PK flag you are putting on that character when you join one I am sure I am not the only person who sees Tribunal flags like this. Removing alts from Tribunals give alts a lot less reason to have conflict in the game and conflict drives stories. Tribunals being public vs cabals not being public means you can lie about your cabal affiliation how many times can one person be kicked out of the harlequins to make peace I think I remember a record of five stated times (when they probably where never removed) this would be BS if someone can just log into their Har alt and check and back to multiplaying.

A point not mentioned but I will bring it up. If you have time for alts they do not all need the power boost of cabals which is what you are asking for. Making an interesting combination of race and class can make for fun RP but effectively useless in adventure or PK is fine. I do not think every character running around in a "secret" cabal is compelling on the secret part of cabals.
Multi Cabal characters also could lead to a situation where half the characters in a cabal are the same person which can leave people feeling seeing 20 different names in their cabal and going Oh we should be able to organize this but in reality there is only 3 people playing in the cabal.

Adhil Also how do you police what two cabals are acceptable to be in given at one point or another every single cabal has been in conflict including Fist and Hammer also Midnight council has been in conflict with the legion ... so alliance is set in stone even if many are stronger than others.

In short I feel like a power boost for your main and distinguishing it as your main by joining a cabal is a unobtrusive way of forcing players to pick a main and pick a side in SK.

I was thinking one light or dark and one grey but I was just trying to think of a way to bring a little more to the game with such small numbers. half of the cabals are dead at a time because of low numbers. What do I know though

Honestly even when the numbers where high half the cabals where dead at a time. Players tend to "group" into factions. An idea that might be workable with a similar intent but would take some coding which isnt likely to happen is a "semi-retire" command. Which would take a character out of a cabal/tribunal with the idea they can unretired and return to it without dealing with an oathbreaker RP. The idea behind this is say I have a Hammer of light character but I really feel like a rogue harlequin but I dont want to screw my hammer character I can semi retire the hammer character make the harlequin until I feel like I dont want to play my harlequin anymore and then switch back. I think some reasonable minimums would be a semi retire can not be undone until at least a monthly reset has happened since activated. It keeps the One character to Cabal. Helps with "restoring" a dead cabal more quickly. Should limit multiplayer because a semi retired character is not in the cabal and to join back up would take either a semi retire of the other cabal character. The one clear downside is you could have a cabal "stacked" with semi_retired characters and when team X is getting strong suddenly you have five people unretire their characters and you have an instant power swing. But Oathbreaker helpfile is fairly clear the idea of cabal swapping is frowned on by the design of the game so I dont see a change happening to it. I dont want to discourage your trying to think of how to bring more to the game things that get added to the game often are little thoughts that get fleshed out into a significant change.