Guilds Revamped (a.k.a. Reylan's Pipedream)

[Reylan Talonspyre]

Kaz and company, I have had some thoughts I have decided to throw at you and the community. I demand that none of this be acted upon quickly for it is nothing special and just my general ramblings. As you may know, I Gamemaster a bunch of RPGs and have a great time engineering game mechanics to fit certain aspects of certain games and improve play-ability for my gaming group. I am currently re-engineering Star Wars: Saga Edition RPG from Wizards of the Coast to better balance out over the 20 levels of the game. I digress though.

Now, after almost five years away from this game, I have had some thoughts about the issues faced by the players and the community as well as some possible solutions.

1. Lack of large numbers of players/kingdoms.
2. Lack of time on many community members part to run larger guilds.
3. Large clumps of people congregating in one guild rather than in many.

Here are some things I will just toss out there. Muse on them as you wish.

A smaller group of players than when the game started way back in the days of Angie, Leto, and Barny has diminished the ability to form alliances (even extra-faith alliances) as well keep players interested in large scale combat. This has led to some reforms, like the ability to create two kingdoms. I believe you were on the right track, but I think it may have been approached incorrectly (my opinion only).

In role-playing games, it is important to have at least a party of 4 to 5 players. Most systems are based around this number of players when handling encounter based combat systems (4th Edition, 3rd Edition, etc.).

My idea stems from a step I took to make a party of 3 players seem like a party of 4 to 5 players. You see at first the easy idea is to just have the players play another character (kingdom analog for this analogy). This was too clunky and annoying. It drew away from the aspect of the game that many love, building a character's story. It is really hard to build two character's stories when you are scrambling to figure out whose initiative it is.

In essence you would double the turn rate of normal guilds, double the land received from tithes, and in every way mathematically connected, double it. In my GMing role, I have noticed that simply doubling hit points made a huge difference in 3.5 and 4th editions. Maybe it will work here. Double the land and turns and you make stronger kingdoms with more resilience.

But players get bored of only having six units and 8 buildings to choose from (it has been awhile, so beats me, just bear with me on exact races, etc.). Maybe adding a shit ton more units (Human: Dragons, Pikemen, Long bowmen, Foot soldiers, Knights, Battlemages, Conventioneers, and Witch Hunters). Maybe even creating units specifically tasked to destroy particular race's units. Going up against elves, lets say they have witches, well then the Human unit Witch-hunter is perfect ... lighting the target unit on fire and having the burning corpses to prove it.

Scummers should be able to bribe parts of the opponent's military. In return, the defense of this will be determined by a sliding scale given to each kingdom that allows the player to modify or regulate how much money is being expended each turn to provide for the troops (x3/4, x1, x1.5, x2) ...3/4s obviously has a huge disadvantage when targeted by a bribe from enemy scummers.

Magic should get an overhaul (as long as you are devoting time to this reworking of the game that would equate out to a huge new job with ZERO pay, but hey, a nerd can dream). More spells that affect perhaps the morale/corruptibility of your troops (see above). Also maybe spells that bonuses to certain units in combat. The game right now feels like 4th Edition DnD. It is streamlined, simplified, and sturdy. Lets make it more complicated (not super complicated, just more time consuming and also big so harder to master) so people spend more time making strategical decisions.

Heroes/Kings/Queens/Barons. This is a specialty unit. It cannot die but can be wounded (weakening all troops morale in the process or bolstering it against corruption). This is your RP character or maybe just your alt on the Comments forums. He or she gets sent on a quest. The mechanics of how that works could follow the process given form in the Dungeons & Dragons game for Facebook. I hate that game personally, but artifacts could be received. Steal the coloring system for World of Warcraft and now you can pick up Single Use Spells that are uber awesome or defensive abilities unlocked through the quest. To start out have about 5-10 quest rewards that each have a % chance to succeed based on the resources committed to the "quest".

This could also be tracked somewhere so at the end of an age, the player can see his accomplishments.

Guild tool upgrade. As long as we are getting super-ballsy, lets add more options for the GMs to see their allies. Let them order scum strikes against a particular target. Integrated databases are already a thing, so that is cool.

That is all for now. Hope you enjoy my pipe dream.

If this has to go to another forum, please be kind and do so as I am stupid and don't know where I would put it since it isn't really a suggestion but more of an open letter to "Management" about how to make the game more sustainable with fewer people.

[Kwaiq]

As always Reylan your post length is inversely proportionate to both the number of respondents and the percentage i can be bothered to read..., Really though I just thought id say hi =D (still got it though!)

[Lady Maven]

lol, I said if guilds returned so would I. I didn't say I'd THINK

[Reylan Talonspyre]

Hi Kwaiq.

Thinking is hard, Maven.

[Kaz]

btw, I will get around to replying at some point. It's just every time I see the thread I'm in the middle of something else. I did fix the polls on the back of seeing the thread and being unable to vote, so it's has archived 'something'