World Interaction - 1 of 4 (Tribes)

[Intrepid]

the Benjari are not coded, and they are very inclusive, so it's unlikely they ever will be represented by more than a rare PC - which lines up with how often they should be seen by the gameworld.

As a particular note on the Benjari: The tribe appears to be dying out, if
you read into the docs a bit.

[ale six]

Reading over this one, I just wanted to make the comment that possibly aside from the absence of the Tan Muark, if all the coded tribes were removed from the game tomorrow I would never have known the difference.

I honestly could not tell you what the difference is between an Arabet and a Seik and a Benjari and a Jul Tavan. I've seen so few PCs played out as parts of these tribes that to me they are all blurred together. Desert elf tribes are even worse -- I have no clue what an SLK or ATV or whatever else is. It's all "WTF" to me.

In this sense I'm not sure why the tribals are around, if they're having so little interaction with the rest of the game outside other small tribes and their own isospheres. It seems like a lot of people enjoy playing tribes and playing desert elves, and maybe I'll try it some day too. I would just like to plead that if you are playing a tribal, find more reasons to interact and make yourself and your tribe known to the rest of the game. I would be in favor of any changes to support that, even if we had to close a few.

[EvilRoeSlade]

Reading over this one, I just wanted to make the comment that possibly aside from the absence of the Tan Muark, if all the coded tribes were removed from the game tomorrow I would never have known the difference.

Same here.

[Intrepid]

Good question.  The tribes exist because either they are/were a pc
clan or they were put into an area to represent an option for pc's wanting
to play from a tribal culture.  They don't have to be abolished in any effort
to consolidate the playerbase; they just need to be limited as a player
option.

As it stands, those human tribes that do have coded support travel around
the Known World, so they do provide links of interaction between the
various settlements and bring everything together.

The desert elf tribes have become necessary because you can't make a
desert elf (correct me if I'm wrong here) who is tribeless without a very
good reason to and approval from the imms.  As there are only two
"whole" tribes being supported, with possible pcs from four others, the
choices are limited enough.  The clan structure is less necessary for
humans and city elves.

I do recommend trying a tribal pc with some friends if you get the chance.
I had a blast myself.  And for human tribals, interaction with the rest of
the race is a good thing.  With elves, it would be nice to see those tribes
amassing together somehow too.

[Angela Christine]

Some players like to play something different than other roles they have played recently.  If you happened to have recently had major roles in both cities, you might want to keep playing but want to play in a completely different area.  That's got to be worth something.



Angela Christine

[Seeker]

I'm completely with Forest Junkie on this, LoD.

I don't agree with your premise that the current options for tribal PCs somehow damages the rest of the gameworld.  I think it is -better- than it used to be, when we instead had "tribes of one" or every other tribal player being a nomadic cast-off of some type.

I think the well-detailed, interesting, staff-approved tribal options offer the game far more depth and richness than anything you claim they take away.  We strongly disagree on the need to hobble player options and on the value of mandating a narrower world for our character's stories.


Seeker

[Cale_Knight]

I have no clue what an SLK or ATV or whatever else is. It's all "WTF" to me.

That's actually a clan of tribal half-giants.

[Sanvean]

As far as the tribes go, many of them were put in because people were already using them as backgrounds and we wanted to provide some support for that.  For example, the human nomads as well as a number of desert elf tribes.  My feeling is that closing these down will not change people's desires to play them, nor do I want the headache involved of trying to force people to play only in standardized clans.  One of the joys of Armageddon is the wide range of roles.

In creating the DE tribes at least, we tried to make them distinctive: one with a reverance for magick, another with an emphasis on comabt and raiding, and another with an existence centered around swindling and stealing.  Even with them available, though, we still see a number of people wanting to create their own clans, although that desire may range from a simple line in the background to a few friends playing out a common tribe together to wanting to create a coded tribe.

One thing people might want to consider is that tribes differ in the amount of staff support they need.  For example, the Benjari et al. don't need much, if any, support once they're set up and turned loose in the game.

My impression is that a lot of people pick tribals because they want to be able to play solo without worrying about when their Lord Commander is going to log on.

We have, in the course of the game, removed a number of the iso-clans in order to try to consolidate players, with some success.  What I mean by an iso-clan is a clan where the players have a base of their own and stay there, ignoring the rest of the mud.  I can see the argument for removing some tribes, but like others I think the solution is to recruit more heavily, rather than to remove choices from the game.

LoD, you say:

I would like to see more people encouraged to join one of two (or perhaps 3-4 if there are enough players to serve) tribal clans to allow for both a deeper environment for the tribal PC's as well as a consistency that allows them to be a near constant source of interaction for the rest of the gameworld.

Could you elaborate on what form that encouragement would take?

Marko said:

I'd love to see a couple of them destroyed the same way as some of them were created - ie, through player actions and interactions.

Why do you think this isn't possible now?

[LoD]

I would like to see more people encouraged to join one of two (or perhaps 3-4 if there are enough players to serve) tribal clans to allow for both a deeper environment for the tribal PC's as well as a consistency that allows them to be a near constant source of interaction for the rest of the gameworld.

Could you elaborate on what form that encouragement would take?

I would reduce the number of tribes available for PC's to apply for directly to a number that would profit from the current size of our player base.  Select the clans which either have the largest home "territory" that non-tribals may have cause to travel though, or by the largest potential for interaction with non-tribal PC's and other tribes.

There are presently 16 tribes listed under the clan "Tribal People".

Based on the feedback from other players in this thread, I would select between 4-5 of these clans as "playable" clans, where players will begin in the village/home of that clan, have a citizenship there and expect there to be a living and breathing atmosphere sophisticated enough to support the play of 5-7+ players.  Have the description read something like:

Active Tribes of the Known World

The Known World of Zalanthas hosts a variety of tribal kinship groups - some settled, some nomadic; some reclusive, others more worldly. Most engage in limited trade with the outside, and a modest proportion of the world's goods can be traced to crafters or looters from one of these groups. While not exhaustive, this list contains descriptions of several human and elven tribes found over the broad face of Zalanthas.

The following tribes will provide you with an opportunity to experience life amidst one of Zalanthas' many desert cultures.  Players wanting to immerse themselves in a supported culture that includes the potential for inner and inter tribal play, territorial dispites and trade negotiations with foreign civilizations should send their application to the designated Staff Member for application.

Unsupported Tribes

Take the remaining 10+ tribes and identify them as unsupported tribes, some of which may be used for your background if you choose a "Nomad" subclass and wish to play it out, and some that would need to be special app if you feel that you have something to bring to the game that one of the other 5 doesn't provide.

As more players are recruited to the MUD and the Imm Staff feels the tribal player base is large enough to maintain another unique desert culture that will add to the gameworld something that the other 5 do not provide, then you can simply move them up from the Unsupported to the Supported section.

Hopefully the process would encourage players to opt for one of the 4-5 current tribal clans that are listed "active" and provide the following:

:arrow: Increased player base for each active tribe.
:arrow: Consistency in their interactions home and abroad.
:arrow: Deeper social potential for horizontal and veritcal play because of more players.

There are a lot of great tribal clans in the game, but I don't think it's necessary to support every single one as a playable option.  I think encouraging players to select from a finite list of tribes tha are "supported" will do more for the game overall than spreading them thin over a larger pool.

-LoD

[marko]

Marko said:

I'd love to see a couple of them destroyed the same way as some of them were created - ie, through player actions and interactions.

Why do you think this isn't possible now?

I've seen tribals of coded tribes act in totally irresponsible ways - attacking everyone that moves turning other tribes and organizations against them so they were hunted down one by one and yet... the tribe continued to exist only because it was coded.  If the actions of the players had impacted the tribe fully then the tribe would have been wiped out or been reduced to such a small number that it would effectively have vanished as a tribe that players could play.

I would like to see a tribe get shutdown, even if it is briefly, to account for massive losses after players royally mess up.  Again, this isn't just a few PCs dying but when the tribe members manage to get a few other tribes, houses, and independents literally tracking down every member of the tribe and killing them on sight - well, the tribe would have to take a few years to recover from that.  As it stands now, the PCs will all get wiped out, and a couple weeks later the tribe is repopulated by PCs.  There isn't a lot of lasting consequences for the stupidity of not just one member but of a group.

Individual tribals shouldn't cause the closing of their tribe unless they do something exceptional.  But, if say there are six tribals who are all acting incredibly stupid in terms of being a tribal (attacking everyone, making enemies of everything that moves, etc) then after people start hunting down everything of that tribe and the six are destroyed - I would like to see the tribe closed for awhile.  Not necessarily destroyed - but closed to reflect that the tribe is now in a significantly weakened state.

If a tribe has a total of one hundredish members and six of their hunters, warriors, and/ or shaman are lost - that's a huge loss.  Over the course of a year if that same tribe loses fifteen to twenty of these then the number of hunters and warriors that are of age would be almost non-existent.  The tribe is down to 80ish members but of that, how many are capable of hunting now... In other words, the tribe would be slowly dying because it cannot gather the resources it requires.  But, because tribes are coded, they continue to exist even in these situations.  

Beyond that, there is an impression that once a tribe is coded, it is a forever thing.  I believe that this exists because there seem to be so few IC consequences for anything.  I've seen tribes at war with one another and yet even after years of raiding - neither tribe seems to have suffered other than losing a bunch of PCs.  

I think a lot of people don't even bother making an attempt to harm a tribe because they feel it is a fruitless endeavor.  A lot of effort goes into the making of a tribe and thus there appears to be a reluctance to make a tribe a transient thing.  I don't think it should be easy to destroy tribes but I'd like to see them shutdown regularly to reflect the losses that they sustain by the continual death of PCs that join them.  Maybe a rotation of having a tribe open for six months or a year and then shutting down to recover from the loss of all the PCs that make chars and promptly died.  If a set number of PCs die before the six month mark then shut the tribe early to reflect the losses.

I could be mistaken of course since this is mainly a perception thing.  

[Dakurus]

Touching on marko's point, I do kid other staff sometimes that, the population of zalanthas should be ever decreasing, because if the PC population is a sampling, it's tough to explain how these folks lived to 20-30 then walk off and die, with no offspring.

There is a booming virtual world/population out there though, which is tough to quantify and get our minds around. But yes, especially in small tribes, there should be more of an impact as PC's die, to the tribe.

We do have to take into account OOC that the game is for fun, and players play to have fun. And we can't exactly say, don't DIE, don't do anything stupid.

Most tribes do have the feeling of being small, and the number of PC's that can and do play in one at a time, are often small, that is always seems tribal. There isn't a strong support or backing for them, in the wild, or anywhere else. Like an independent they do live that feeling of being pretty much alone. But yes we encourage all tribals to do their best to take into account what their actions may do to their tribe.

I'll certainly as a D-Elf staffer, consider some of the things you said. But it's unlikely (though it'd be fun) that we'll make each tribe into a full simulation, with aging, birthrates, good years, bad years, and PC deaths have an effect.

[Maybe42or54]

Also, as another point, I would love it if there were tribes that would raid other tribes for women, healers, etc, and it would be accepted that once you are "Captured" you are now the new tribe, owing all of your support to them.

Or something along those lines.

[spawnloser]

Also, as another point, I would love it if there were tribes that would raid other tribes for women, healers, etc, and it would be accepted that once you are "Captured" you are now the new tribe, owing all of your support to them.

Or something along those lines.

Who says this doesn't happen?  By PCs?  Probably very very little...but it probably does happen virtually by one tribe or another.

[Angela Christine]

Also, as another point, I would love it if there were tribes that would raid other tribes for women, healers, etc, and it would be accepted that once you are "Captured" you are now the new tribe, owing all of your support to them.

Capturing adults doesn't really work, the adults always remain captives.  They have to be treated like property, otherwise they want to go home and be with their own family.  (The cultures where stealing adult women works are generally ones where women are considered property anyway.)  If you kidnap adults you are trying to get slaves, not new members of your tribe.  It will be decades before they can really be trusted.

Stealing children is much more practical.  A child, say 2-8 years old, is young enough to be fully assimilated into the clan, and too young to make a good attempt at escaping back home during the assimilation process.  Infants are rarely accessible and are fragile, a kid that makes it to toddler age is probably healthy.  By the time they are in their teens (old enough to be allowed outside the camp without adult supervision) all of their friends are in the new tribe, the people they consider family are in the new tribe, and even if they run into their former tribe those people are mostly strangers now.  


Angela Christine

[Maybe42or54]

There we go. Stealing Children, even better.