Population of the Houses

[theebie]

hi,

Lets imagine there's a big Merchant House.

Then there's that garrison. Capable of lets say holding seven hundred
people.

In that garrison you have some PCs, some NPCS and loads and loads of VNPCs.

From my understanding the situation of the PCs reflects the -average- situation of the House (or at least the garrison)'s state of all.
If the PC run unit is really small, the general population in the garrison is small, there are really few VNPCs and the House aint prospering.
If the PC run unit is filled with PCs, so are the VNPC runned units.


This is how I personally see things. Some others see like this:
No matter of PC activity, be there just one or a dozend, there's always
seven hundred "persons" in the garrison and the number of VNPCs
is calculated by the formula:

numberOfVNPCs = 700 - numerOfPCs


---

i would like to hear some opinions to this please.

[ibusoe]

Wow, neat question.

[WarriorPoet]

I think numbers stay pretty much consistant, regardless of PC activity in a clan. There are virtual people out there, going about their business all the time. If there isn't a single Byn PC, I still think that the virtual Asslasher Warband needs to be out, doing contracts, full-tilt.

-WP would like to hear an Immortal opinion on this.

[Aldiel]

Always about the same.  The problem is the guard can be comprised of 1 PC to 16 PCs, and that's a big difference.  At one PC, the guard would have just suffered from a mantis raid, and at 16 PCs, the guard would be overflowing with men and be short on arms, cots, and funding.

[Nao]

To a degree :-p

Thinking about it, if the house has been low on PCs for years, I might assume that vnpc-wise, they aren't doing too great, either - it will give a good IC explanation why the house isn't functional right now (a house with too little PCs usually isn't).

So this has a little influence - but as long as PC numbers are within the normal range, I wouldn't couple the vnpc population to this.

[Marauder Moe]

A house with few PCs still probably has at least dozen or so NPCs.  Something to think about.

[Halaster]

The number of active PC's very rarely reflects the actual numbers.  If House House only has 4 active PC's, that doesn't mean they've lost a bunch of people.

[Naiona]

A house can have as few as -0- PCs and remain virtually large, healthy and vital.

A common mistake we see as staff is players making assumptions as to the power and/or influence of an IC organization or clan based on them having few PCs active in game.  This is rarely the case.  If you are ever curious as to the status of any organization in game (in a general sense that everyone would know) please email the mud account for guidance.

[Eternal]

A lot of people, especially (but not always)  those new to Armageddon, have backgrounds in other games where the power of an in-game entity is directly proportional to the number of players it has.  Games like Guild Wars, DAoC, etc. reinforce this constantly.  One of the key things to realize with ArmageddonMUD is that the game world exists regardless of (some would say, in spite of) the PC situation.

The world continues.  What we do, as players, is take a character who would already be there virtually, flesh him out, and put him on the same stage inhabited by other players and inhabited (or well-coded) npcs.  If, for instance, House Kurac players haven't been seen for a while, it doesn't mean that the house isn't prospering.  Just, rather, player characters haven't run across any in their day-to-day dealings as of late.  The vnpc merchants and tailors are still out there searching for, buying, and selling their desert goods even if only to vnpcs.

Players breathe animated life into characters, but the characters are still Zalanthan and as real there as the vnpc merchants at the Trader's or the gladiators that battle constantly in the Arena.  The world goes ever on, and on, down from the road where it began.

Lord Templar Hard Nose loves thieves who haven't seen a pc Templar in a while... especially when they get grabbed and beaten by that poor guy in the kank stand.

[Larrath]

The amount of PCs in a hard-coded clan has no influence on its number.
If your clan isn't coded, but is rather a group of characters whose backgrounds all place them in a tribe, the memory of their tribe will probably disappear when they die.

But not so in a hard-coded clan, and this has a few reasons.
Let's take House Borsail as an example, and let's say that every 1 Wyvern PC represents 20 Wyvern NPCs; this means that if this one recruit gets killed, the House can immediately feel the impact.  It also means that a Mr. Nobody Recruit can threaten to leave the House if not given a major pay increase and the PC leaders won't be able to laugh at him because letting that recruit go would mean losing four times the amount of PC Wyverns in their clan.  It also means that someone wanting to destroy and cripple House Borsail only has to kill four or five Wyverns and, after the House is 'weakened', attack it somehow.
Another reason is the stability of the game - if the major Houses were so vulnerable, we could have one House toppling every RL month, which makes it hard to have clans with a long IC history and true depth to them.
Third, and most importantly, a system where every 1 PC significantly increases the total force of the clan encourages unrealistic and excessive recruitment - clans will try to hire 15 PCs and let them spar while the 300 NPCs they add to the clan take over the Grey Forest.

Also, most clans have several tiers of leadership.  I look at it as divisions - let's say you have 4 levels of leadership.
The bottom level is an Agent or a Junior Noble, and they oversee up to 4-10 fighters plus a Sergeant, plus 2-4 employees in an advisory position such as spies, gemmers, crafters, merchants and/or aides.
PC leaders will almost always be at this level.
The medium level is the Low Senior, who oversee and direct the Agents/Juniors.  They probably have four or five such people under them.  These are usually the NPC superiors that interact with the PCs under normal circumstances.
The upper level is the High Senior, and those oversee the Low Seniors, probably two or three of them.  They call most of the shots in the clan.
Those are the NPCs you might see in very major events and would probably boost an average templar's standing simply by having wine with them.
The highest level is the House Head, who's usually totally hedonistic and only gets involved with the most important decisions.  He doesn't really answer to anyone and keeps the entire clan, with the help of the High Seniors, in check.  This guy is usually scary.

Anyway, what this means in numbers is this:
1 House Head
4 High Seniors
12 Low Seniors
50 Juniors/Agents = 50 divisions.

The numbers of divisions and such in a Noble House is probably smaller since many nobles spend their whole lives with a stipend and a wineglass in hand, but all in all it's the same.  There could be 10 divisions for the House Guard unit, 10 divisions for Public Relations, and so on and so forth.
The PCs in the clan are the condition of a single Division, but usually it would be one of the more important divisions in the House.  The lack of PCs in that division would make the House a little weaker, perhaps, but in the big picture it's comparable to a third hidden dagger on a trained and experienced warrior.  It can help, but it's not really crucial.

[Aldiel]

Instead of saying that that house is unpopulated, you could say, if you wanted to figure PC influence into aclan, that that sergeant's unit is spares because units are mostly comprised of PC.  Units are around 8-12 people (this is not a universal fact, each house works differently, but it is a fact in one house.)  However, when you have one unit represent the success of an entire house, things don't figure out right.