How to make clans more appealing?

[James de Monet]

Those House family members WANT to be messed with so they can play the "ruthless" merchants and shut down their competition. They don't get to do it a lot, so please, consider their feelings and give them someone to go after.

<3 Dman

[evilcabbage]

Or maybe the House family wants someone who can throw ludicrous bribes at them begging them to -not- kill them, so they can make a KILLINg off that indie crew shortly before shutting them down.

[Chettaman]

Having only read mostly the front page, mind you, I'll chip in.

1)  Don't raise clan pay:  crush indep money making.  Sure, lots will argue this isn't/fair/fun whatever.  But the simple truth is, indep play isn't harsh enough on indeps.  They're the scum that should be crushed under boot.  This is Arm, inflation is not M/C/B approved.

I like this idea too! Make it alot harder for independents to make coin. - I'm still all for increasing pay and/or having it happen more often.

[FreeRangeVestric]

Make it harder for salting and whatever else that should be considered menial tasks to be lucrative, sure. But making it impossible for independent merchants to be profitable will only hurt role play overall.

Not all independent PCs are dirty grebbers or 'the scum that should be crushed under the boot,' and thinking that way seems pretty ridiculous to me.

Luckily, this doesn't seem to be staff's aim, judging from this thread.

[HavokBlue]

If people feel that one thing is more fun that another, I'm almost always of the opinion that the thing that is considered less fun should be fixed, not the thing that people already like.

[FreeRangeVestric]

If people feel that one thing is more fun that another, I'm almost always of the opinion that the thing that is considered less fun should be fixed, not the thing that people already like.

Said it better than I did!

[Eyeball]

If people feel that one thing is more fun that another, I'm almost always of the opinion that the thing that is considered less fun should be fixed, not the thing that people already like.

Said it better than I did!

Hear hear.

[Chettaman]

I was thinking that crafted items should cost more and rocks, gem stones, hides, bones and the like should cost less.

I understand making coin is easy.
I also understand surviving is easy.
you don't need coins to survive.

crafter characters will make enough coin to sustain or even prosper while people who hunt make a meager amount only surviving. - this may lead to wanting to work for others.

+1 to more fun!

[Chettaman]

Well. Inexperienced players might have a hard time having fun with hard mode.

I can see what you all are saying now. It's a playability vs realistic thing again. I don't really have a problem with it being easy to make coin anyway.

As a gamer who loved to play games that would have me lost for weeks, I hate new games and how they tell me where to go so readily. - what I'm saying is, I like it hard. ; )

[Delirium]

You can definitely hardmode it in Armageddon. You just have to stop giving yourself coded advantages.

[Harmless]

I'm not sure there is an easy mode at all. The imms exist.

[Refugee]

If people feel that one thing is more fun that another, I'm almost always of the opinion that the thing that is considered less fun should be fixed, not the thing that people already like.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

[X-D]

I love how this thread is called "how to make clans more appealing" And the only way many can think of is to make everything else crappier. Hey, If we park this wreck next to this junker, the junker will look like a gem!

Now I do not know about anybody else, but if I join a clan, and what clan I join depends on what thematic experience I desire. That is why Byn is normally my fav, it actually has that. Other clans have in the past, Salarr expansion division, Tor, Winrothol...of course militia and Legion do as well. Though of late I have found it to be lacking in all clans other then Byn/legion/militia. I still propose that you all look at what the clan is supposed to be and make it even more of that...make them more distinct...even just the players doing so will make each clan more appealing.

As to making it hard for indies to make/keep coin...HAH...that only hurts the newbs. Older players decide what the PC is going to be and keep it that way. I make coin as needed for many of my PCs because I WANT them to be poor...I know many others do as well. Sometimes it is simply because I want more time to socialize though.

Course, with many of my PCs, if making coin in a legal manner became too hard...Eh...Just target those rich clan PCs...help the clan turnover rate. Many others would just set sights on newb coin again.

[Fujikoma]

I love how this thread is called "how to make clans more appealing" And the only way many can think of is to make everything else crappier. Hey, If we park this wreck next to this junker, the junker will look like a gem!

Now I do not know about anybody else, but if I join a clan, and what clan I join depends on what thematic experience I desire. That is why Byn is normally my fav, it actually has that. Other clans have in the past, Salarr expansion division, Tor, Winrothol...of course militia and Legion do as well. Though of late I have found it to be lacking in all clans other then Byn/legion/militia. I still propose that you all look at what the clan is supposed to be and make it even more of that...make them more distinct...even just the players doing so will make each clan more appealing.

As to making it hard for indies to make/keep coin...HAH...that only hurts the newbs. Older players decide what the PC is going to be and keep it that way. I make coin as needed for many of my PCs because I WANT them to be poor...I know many others do as well. Sometimes it is simply because I want more time to socialize though.

Course, with many of my PCs, if making coin in a legal manner became too hard...Eh...Just target those rich clan PCs...help the clan turnover rate. Many others would just set sights on newb coin again.

I carefully considered the wording of the thread title because there's already a thread devoted to making life harder for independents to fix the problem while most of my focus was on this subject and I kept innapropriately posting in the other thread. I'd much rather explore the side of the issue that focuses on making the game more fun for individual players than soul-crushing, because you can already choose that for yourself if you wish. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Chettaman]

You can definitely hardmode it in Armageddon. You just have to stop giving yourself coded advantages.

Well joining a clan should be hard mode, if you ask me. You're now around other players who expect to have fun and to have fun all the time. EVERYONE expects something of you. Hence the hope that this thread will give people ideas to have more fun that people aren't having.
If people aren't having fun in a clan they should consider looking inward more than outward. The clan is there. You're all together (whenever you're on) have fun together. I tend to limit myself with anti-social characters so I haven't really clanned in a while.
suggestion again: just try new things instead of riding out and killing things together and maybe getting into an exciting thing where a raptor showed up in the grass lands duel-wielding bastard swords - and you and your buddy managed to beat it. or waking up to spar, eat and sleep - if you even ever sleep.
Those are things everyone does. luck (good or bad) you run into something you can tell a story about. Training do it without armor. Gladiators did it? okay, the training suggestion isn't as good, but I mean what else can you think of? Ooh. How about actually excersing? Trust me. I know fighting is an excersize in itself, but I mean... you're not gonna be muscle bound just by fighting your whole life? You must of lifted something in your time. Maybe even run to build better cardio. Training is training. You could even break rocks with your head like ''monks'' or something.

Make every kill worth while. (especially bastard-raptors) The feeling of being the hunter and not the hunted will make your experience better, not just being the dood who rides up and kills things. Make every training session painful and challenging. Sweat and tears will make your experience better. And motivation. Clans are teams and team mates motivate each other to be better than they were the day before! The hour before! The minute before! The second before! Rub some dirt in it and get the hell up, there's still training to be done. You've had your nose broken before. Who the hell needs a medic? Your teeth fell out! You didn't notice! Ha ha! That's what I'm talkin' about!  Medics are for softies.

[FantasyWriter]

Heh, I once harassed one indie merchant with my Kadian to the point that staff (or an NPC, can't remember which) told me to stop, that such a small problem wasn't worth the resources expended.
I was proud.

[Lukoyin]

Leaders:

This includes non-sponsored positions of power too, will make or break a clan/house for appeal. Imo, the best leaders are the one's who ask the most questions, and incorporate the clan/house design to suit and entertain the player/PC instead of shoving them into a rigid place/position. "I now pronounce you Kadian hunter #4374! Go forth and collect shit for our crafters, and I'll check in on you every few RL days. Or weeks" (example, not bashing current kadian leaders) Then of course there's delegation, coming up with any excuse/reason to have an RPT, and so on - but those issues have been beaten to death. Carrying on....

Have a cookie!

Most people get enjoyment or feel appreciated for their efforts and RP when they get a pat on the head and a "Good Job." Clans/Houses should be willing and able to do this. They're suppose to be highly sought after, near impossible to obtain positions. Yes, the free food, water and roof is /suppose/ to be enough, when we all live in a world where all of the above are a daily fight to survive and keep safe - but they're not when it comes down to it. Anyone who's played the game for more then an RL week will know how to get these things without ever looking at a clan/house. On the flip side, its entirely jarring (at least to me) to have "special armor" or "more pay" handed out until you earn some actual rank. - That leaves a fairly big gap between recruit and Sergeant to muddle through, however.

Solution: Promote without coded promotion. I'm preeeeetty sure that a House with hundreds of employees isn't going to have the time/care to micro-manage everything that goes down. That's where middle management comes in (your sarge/overseer) and they don't want to deal with /every/ headache or mundane task, so "promoting" your recruit arse to be in charge of XYZ makes their life easier and serves to make their grunts feel of value and work harder. Win/Win. - And if you're the type to enjoy conflict, slack off and make your boss look bad - Win again.

Schedule:

Been covered plenty so far, and I agree certain Houses/clans shouldn't have rigid schedules at all - There does need to be some sort of balance from you, the player, however. How is your PC earning their keep if not showing up (even if there aren't any others about) to "work"? Give your bar-sitting, or solo-hunting/grebbing some purpose towards who you work for to keep /some/ realism.

Inner-city conflict:

Lovely. You have enemies way on the opposite side of the Known you're all suppose to hate and war against. How often do you see them or have a battle of some sort? Next to zip. - How often do you, as a Cavalier see a Tenneshi? Or a Kadian see a Salarri? Probably a damn lot. Clans/Houses should /constantly/ be at war with one another in their own city, to make themselves stronger and look better to their King. Get some brawls between the two going, slander some names, bed their mates just to piss them off!

Note: Unless it gets to the point to screw with the bottom line, or cause open bloodshed in the streets, Nobles/Templars shouldn't have the time or interest to get involved in commoner, petty bullshit - nor should employees be running to them to hide after getting a bloody nose - Suck it up. Unless you're going to be killed, or injured to the point you can't serve your purpose to the House/Clan, they (leaders) shouldn't give two shits.

RPTs/HRPT Clan style:

Make your fun publicly known, but exclusive. Unless you're Fale, why is the whole city invited to your event? Hey! You're not Arm/Legions/Borsail/Kadius! You're not invited! Get outta here! - Two RL days later, after the excluded PC(s) saw the mantis head...."Hi, I'm Amos/Talia - can I join?"

[flurry]

I think it's important to note that the fun of playing independent character is not the ease of making vast sums of money. At least, I sincerely hope that is not the case, since that seems contrary to the theme of the game. The game supposed to involve struggle, and not just the struggle to keep all your stuff in merely three apartments. I mention this because making it more challenging to hoard coins wouldn't have to make independent characters less fun.

[FantasyWriter]

I play mostly independent PCs because that's the roles I -like- to place. Social outcasts, loners, assholes, adventurers, explorers.

Not everyone that plays indies does it for wealth. I've seldom played indies that cared about coins at all after they had everything they needed. Coins are useless to a desert traveler with decent gear.

[Quirk]

Just chiming in to say that this is by far one of my favorite things to do. Warning, it almost never works out for the long-term, if you do it right you will make the actual merchant/noble Houses you are competing with angry, and they will come after you to try and ruin you.

However, running an indy clan/organization that isn't just riding in the wake of some other House or established organization and playing it "safe" is one of the more rewarding and plot starting/driving things you can do.

I highly suggest that if you are a veteran player, and are capable of doing this, you should try it at least once.

You want conflict? This will get you all of the conflict you want and more.

There isn't a lot of House on House conflict generally. But you make an indy clan that deals in something another established organization deals in, and you will see what it is like quickly to compete IC'ly with a monopoly.

This, this, so much this.

But I also find this plays into my GMH gripes. The way GMHs have been positioned in the world, they are well beyond being threatened by some two-bit operation opening a shop in the Common Quarter or Freil's. Their revenues are vast, and come from supplying the nobles and militia of the citystates. They're entitled to be unfriendly to others trying to make it in their line of work, but this makes more sense when they're contemptuous and disparaging than when they're viewing it as some kind of war, as though they had an opponent worth plotting against. It's a war not on rivals - they have plenty of more prosperous rivals sitting pretty in NPC shops - but on PCs, and it's pretty ugly, up there with being stolen from and walking past several NPC elves to pounce on a PC elf as the most likely culprit.

It's hard to create a new organisation. It's a fragile undertaking simply building up a group of good people and keeping them alive. When beyond this, a new organisation exists on a radically smaller scale than almost every existing organisation in the gameworld, unrealistic conflicts rising out of the boredom of sponsored characters who don't have any real dangers to their organisation to stay on top of are a serious problem, a force working to keep things stagnant.

Heh, I once harassed one indie merchant with my Kadian to the point that staff (or an NPC, can't remember which) told me to stop, that such a small problem wasn't worth the resources expended.
I was proud.

Indeed, your pride in being told off for poor roleplay does you much credit.

----

More generally, Nyr's already posted to say that it's seldom the case that indies accumulate coin just for the pleasure of accumulation. Much of it goes on driving roleplay and plots. In other words, it's a warchest which gets opened to provide inducements to other, poorer PCs. Brainstorming ideas to make "hoarding" coins harder is counterproductive.

Still, I'd be happy for acquiring easily accessible raw materials to be a relatively low-value activity. It sounds like there are certain areas of brokenness there which might bear being looked at.

[Delusion]

Heh, I once harassed one indie merchant with my Kadian to the point that staff (or an NPC, can't remember which) told me to stop, that such a small problem wasn't worth the resources expended.
I was proud.

Indeed, your pride in being told off for poor roleplay does you much credit.

I don't see what's "poor" about a character misjudging a situation and an NPC superior coming and telling them to knock it off. GMH PCs are allowed to have flaws and stuff. They may even be interesting characters, although at least a few are faced with being treated like mobile vending machines and sometimes also with dealing with "I ordered fifty novelty hats from your predecessor. Give them to me right now! What, you don't have them? You suck." I haven't seen that recently, at least. And, in the game, GMH PCs interact primarily with commoners in the cities. Sometimes family members might deal more with nobility and templars. Deals made by Senior Merchants and slave labour mass-producing stuff for armies aren't really relevant except as some background thing, because that's all done by NPCs.

[Nyr]

Heh, I once harassed one indie merchant with my Kadian to the point that staff (or an NPC, can't remember which) told me to stop, that such a small problem wasn't worth the resources expended.
I was proud.

Indeed, your pride in being told off for poor roleplay does you much credit.

Perhaps the pendulum shifts in that regard.  Right now, I would say that we actively try to encourage PC leaders in GMHs to deal with competition from independents.  Buy them out, make their lives miserable, kill their crew, price them out of the area, etc.  If the House truly has the stance that no single independent is competition, then they're not that good of a monopoly.  At some point and at some level, the PC action has to be around PCs.

[ShaLeah]

I would think BIG BROTHER is watching to be very fitting on Zalanthas. I hope snuffing the up and coming master crafter IS one of the things that GMH pcs do.

[Quirk]

Perhaps the pendulum shifts in that regard.  Right now, I would say that we actively try to encourage PC leaders in GMHs to deal with competition from independents.  Buy them out, make their lives miserable, kill their crew, price them out of the area, etc.  If the House truly has the stance that no single independent is competition, then they're not that good of a monopoly. 

Historically, these clans were not meant to be absolute monopolies, merely huge merchant clans. In the present, they're still not absolute monopolies: plenty of NPC vendors exist selling gear of the same types these Houses trade in. The monopoly, such as it is, lies in their trading relationships with the rich and powerful city clans. But these relationships are cemented above PC level; PCs aren't going to stop Borsail as a whole buying Salarri weapons, or end Fale's reliance on Kadius. There is no possibility of PC competition. If we ignore this and assume that they're greedy for every last sid no matter how grubby, and that they're going to shift their sights downward to pick on those who could be construed to be a far-future threat, however, there is no compelling reason for a GMH member to pick on a couple of itinerant peddler PCs over an NPC with enough substance to own or rent premises in the competitive bazaar.

At some point and at some level, the PC action has to be around PCs.

The problem is one of scale. On the one hand we have clans written into a position of massive wealth and untouchability; on the other hand we have dribs and drabs of perhaps half a dozen people. There is no sensible way to have the former feel threatened by the latter, and any conflict that does take place is guaranteed to end in the favour of those with infinite resources.

This is the same lack of realism that used to be seen in the templars who insisted that all PCs bow to them when entering a virtually crowded room. Yes, picking on PCs creates interaction. When it's unrealistic interaction, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. If such unrealistic interaction is viewed as somehow necessary to the role, there's a problem with the role. The creation of "conflict" which is no more than PC bullying is something that was supposedly ironed out of templars long ago, and shouldn't be allowed to find a new home elsewhere.

If city clans of an intermediate size existed, the gulf between the small groups of indie PCs and the huge clans could be filled by entities with meaningful grounds to interact with both. For now, there's no reason for these huge clans to interact with the groups of indies save malice. Exciting as it may be to attempt to hold out against infinitely deep pockets and documented influence, GMH intervention condemns player created businesses to an eventual death, and in doing so, squashes one of the main outlets players have to fight staleness entering the setting. I am disappointed to see the "pendulum" swinging toward giving that malice imm support.

[Delusion]

It's probably better to view GMHs more like a chain of franchises than one monolithic group where the boss handles every last bit of trouble, where the day-to-day is concerned. Senior Merchant Amos just isn't going to bother coming and helping Junior Agent Talia out with some petty problem. He has his hands full already. Sucks to be Talia if she can't figure it out herself, and it better be pretty serious to request assistance from other entities within the House.