How To Have a War

[Armaddict]

Recently tried to promote conflict between the two.  Conflict hungry savages swarmed me and drove me off with insurmountable odds and hyper-reaction.  Which only says that it's kind of ripe, really.  People want it.

But there's nothing actually turning it into battle.  A PC effort can't storm either city, which means they can, essentially, be ignored.

Really, I'd wish for an elaborate system of various resources that have to be gathered/bought/found/raided for in order for the city, as a whole, to benefit in some way (or suffer from, with lack of it), movements to take such resources to each city, and limited 'points' where that resource can be found, opening up the ability for each army as well as third parties to set up small-scale combats, skirmishes, operations, raids, etc, and have it be meaningful without actually requiring full time staff support.  In other words, a coded system that promotes conflict over resources.

Which ain't gonna happen.  But damn if that'd be cool.

[TheWanderer]

... which requires staff support.

/plink plink, I'm done here.

Oh. I didn't really read the thread, just the title. Was the goal not to have staff support? Any war is gonna have staff support, and you're stupid to think otherwise.

[Gimfalisette]

I think players are hampered a lot more by what they and other players do than anything staff does or doesn't do. Build your plot around particular players or skills, someone dies? Whoops. You wanted to run an RPT but just found out you're being transferred to a new job? Whoops. There's a guy you need to contact but that dude is simply not ever on when you are? Whoops.

Especially now that we have the request tool, communicating with staff and getting help seems a lot easier than it was in the past. But if your plot requires X, Y, and Z from the player side of things, and for player reasons those don't happen...that just doesn't work very well. But that's a player problem, not a staff problem. (We players notoriously suck at keeping our PCs alive and active.)

I guess staff could throw a war and invite us all? But then the complaint always seems to be, "You railroaded us!" Is there a way to be happy, somewhere in the balance?

[BadSkeelz]

Again, that's assuming the war didn't already end and I just missed that tidbit. But... you could have Tuluki players try to burn down farming villages, Allanaki players defend those villages -- small skirmishes that actually have a meaningful impact in a desert where it's difficult to come by fertile land. Riots, social upheaval, something grand to facilitate better rp than, "Hey, I killed a beetle," with the following grunt and, "Cool."

There were and are so many opportunities.  We don't need to have another war, we just need to flesh out the one everybody's forgotten about.

The villages of both sides are too heavily defended to be assaulting without staff animating a few hundred soldiers for the desert. The farming villages are also VERY close to their respective city states (or in Tuluk's case, inside the fucking thing). There's no room to interdict farming shipments. There's not enough PC troops to assault or even harass the farms.

The war's ended because the primary mission of both sides have been accomplished.

[TheWanderer]

Again, I didn't really pay much attention to the thread -- just glossed over it and the title, then tossed in my two cents.

Doing anything without staff support/intervention usually ends up being pretty trivial, and if you're going, "How To Have a War," having staff onboard would be the first step.

And if the war's ended, seeing as how I've heard little of any other PC skirmishes, your post would suggest both sides accomplished their goals at the HRPT in March.  Why bother getting the hopes of the playerbase up by posting something akin to, "Thus the stalemate has come to a close and the war between Allanak and Tuluk has been renewed." That's with genuine curiosity.

[LauraMars]

Let's avoid calling names, please.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

The reality is that there is no war. There was a conflict that was resolved. Now there are hostilities, but there is no war. In a war, you try to take over things or take back things. This is true in literally every conflict. The problem in Armageddon is that there is nothing for the North to take from the South, but there is stuff for the South to take from the North. Ideally, both sides would want something, or want to save something, from the other side.

However, in the case of the South, taking something isn't a matter of taking the one thing. They have to take the whole thing, and so in order to do that, they need high ranking NPC support. In short, for there to be a war, there has to be staff involvement.

If we were looking at an ideal situation for the game of Armageddon, in order to breed constant conflict, you would either have one city with factions within it trying to control areas or risk dying out, or you would have two civilizations who either need something the other side has, or who fight ceaselessly over a natural resource.

Let's say a fresh-water sea popped up in the middle of the Red Desert. This is water - this is literally life, both for humanoids, and for plants. So you have this insanely lush, vast area that needs to be controlled so that you can drive wagon trains back and forth between it and the controlling city. To control the oasis, you have to enter by one of two or three entrances. These are patrolled by well-scripted NPC soldiers, who are brought by the PC templars to man the locations. These NPC soldiers are backed up by PCs. The goal in taking the oasis is to kill all of the NPC soldiers so that you can bring your own controlling force in and hold the locations.

What does this do for your city? Controlling the oasis brings down prices at NPC vendors across your city. It changes room descriptions. It provides room echoes befitting a city rolling in wealth. It gets beggar NPCs to disappear. It makes living in your city more pleasant. And all of that, with the possible exception of changing room descriptions, is possible via scripting. Er, well, I suppose the price matrix would have to be coded too. I could write up the connecting web if I were so inclined, though.

But in this situation, there would be reason for perpetual war between the civilizations.

You could replace the oasis with a massive metal mine, if you wanted, and get the same result. The benefits would change, but the idea would remain the same. Something PCs can fight over and change what happens to their home town. Yes, you need to have staff willing to code and write up all of the initial framework, but it would completely change the stale feeling you get now.

[Marauder Moe]

Wars against gith, spiders, kryl, or other NPCs are in my experience a whole lot funner than wars against other players. But those all require a lot of staff work.

To elaborate: PC versus NPC wars (or PvE, player versus envirnonemnt) are MUCH easier for PCs to roleplay because the NPCs provide the necessary conflict of interest. I.e., they want to eat you and you don't want to be eaten.

This.  Large-scale battles with players on both sides are just nasty, confusing, and exceedingly deadly.  They are not that great.

Do you know what mostly made the war HRPT's fun?  The simple fact that you took a significant portion of the playerbase and dropped them in a different location for an extended (1-2 weeks) period of time and caused them to mingle more closely.


Interestingly, if you narrow down the definition of "war" to something like that, it becomes more reasonable for PCs to start the ball rolling themselves.  Sure, Blue-Robe Malikus can't start a war by himself, but he probably could get his unit of soldiers, some Wyverns/Scorpions, a band or two of Byn, mages, conscripts, and a gaggle of adventurous nobles+aides together.  Take that group, tell the staff you want to rile up some spiders/gith/delves/whatever, maybe even northerners, and I bet there's a fair chance they'd be willing to load a camp and throw a few waves of NPCs at you over the next week or so.

[Kismetic]

Step 1 - Seige the enemy state with the bulk of your standing army/slave warriors/volunteers.

Step 2 - The enemy state counters with world devastating magick/psionics.

Step 3 - Smuggle forces from under siege and harry supply lines.

Step 4 - Retreat, reverse roles and refresh.


Be the change, RGS.

[RogueGunslinger]

You can wage war like a terror cell or a guerrilla group. You will still need to communicate with staff, but look at ways that small groups have fought against large groups historically and maybe apply it to your plans in game.

The thing is - when that is the limit of what you can do, and it doesn't seem to have any real impact, it starts getting to the point where you go "well, now what?"

You're likely right. But no one is doing it. So, maybe it would lead to things. Maybe no. Maybe it would suck or be boring. But it might be worth trying.

People have done it. And it didn't really lead to anything.

Granted, that might have been due to X factor and Y factor... but my point is, people have made sustained, prolonged efforts at keeping the conflict and war plots going on, so (directed at RGS) the suggestion that players only need to take up the mantle and try a little is borderline insulting.

Alright, things have sort of wandered and I didn't want to just ignore your question. So let me try to clarify why me and you weren't really discussing the same things.

People wanted another war, or were complaining about not seeing enough effects of the last one. I, in my usual dickish way said they aren't trying hard enough(this was all just a random though, not really the sort of material I'd have as a first post in an actual topic for discussing). Which I agree is disingenuous to them.  Those people, however, are not the same people who are making sustained prolong efforts at keeping the conflict going. There's a difference between wanting your plots to leave a lasting impression on the world(which I completely agree with you on) and people not feeling involved in plots or feeling that there isn't any sort of war going on.

The difference between those people is that one is hopefully having some fun and making it fun for others too, even if their plans don't always pan out. Where as the other group is expecting all the fun to come to them. I  wasn't talking about the first group of people in my original "random Thought" which this thread was made from.

[Delirium]

Okay, one more thought, spurred by 7DV's post, and a desire to offer possible solutions and my reasonings behind them;

I do feel it was ultimately a mistake to destroy the area of Tyn Dashra, because that meant there was nothing left to fight over. It would have been a far more interesting storyline to see the Muark lands get fought over, taken over, and dominated by one side or the other. I understand that things might have happened the way they did for (REASONS) but I think there could have been a way to work that in and allow for something left behind to fight over.

Resources - and the scarcity of those resources, no matter whether they are magickal, metal, or more mundane - are at the heart of Armageddon's conflict, and when you remove such a large resource wholesale you remove the source of conflict. Add in a resource to fight over, or a real and immediate need for a resource that one city has and the other doesn't, and you will see conflict arise again. As it is, it's reminiscent of a game of cops and robbers - everybody's fighting, but it's a he-said-she-said and nobody has a real, defined direction to strive toward, and nobody really wins or loses anything tangible.

[Molten Heart]

You can wage war like a terror cell or a guerrilla group. You will still need to communicate with staff, but look at ways that small groups have fought against large groups historically and maybe apply it to your plans in game.

The thing is - when that is the limit of what you can do, and it doesn't seem to have any real impact, it starts getting to the point where you go "well, now what?"

You're likely right. But no one is doing it. So, maybe it would lead to things. Maybe no. Maybe it would suck or be boring. But it might be worth trying.

People have done it. And it didn't really lead to anything.

Granted, that might have been due to X factor and Y factor... but my point is, people have made sustained, prolonged efforts at keeping the conflict and war plots going on, so (directed at RGS) the suggestion that players only need to take up the mantle and try a little is borderline insulting.

Alright, things have sort of wandered and I didn't want to just ignore your question. So let me try to clarify why me and you weren't really discussing the same things.

People wanted another war, or were complaining about not seeing enough effects of the last one. I, in my usual dickish way said they aren't trying hard enough(this was all just a random though, not really the sort of material I'd have as a first post in an actual topic for discussing). Which I agree is disingenuous to them.  Those people, however, are not the same people who are making sustained prolong efforts at keeping the conflict going. There's a difference between wanting your plots to leave a lasting impression on the world(which I completely agree with you on) and people not feeling involved in plots or feeling that there isn't any sort of war going on.

The difference between those people is that one is hopefully having some fun and making it fun for others too, even if their plans don't always pan out. Where as the other group is expecting all the fun to come to them. I  wasn't talking about the first group of people in my original "random Thought" which this thread was made from.

Is it fair or even accurate to lump players into two separate and distinct groups?

[Ol 55]

This discussion may be detrimental to the game, as it revolves around the game's current main arc.  Some things I've read here touch far too close on things I've seen developing in the world, things that are in the works and may not have hit the scene, yet.  Maybe our energy is better focused on playing the game and writing taste descriptions for baby items.

[RogueGunslinger]

You can wage war like a terror cell or a guerrilla group. You will still need to communicate with staff, but look at ways that small groups have fought against large groups historically and maybe apply it to your plans in game.

The thing is - when that is the limit of what you can do, and it doesn't seem to have any real impact, it starts getting to the point where you go "well, now what?"

You're likely right. But no one is doing it. So, maybe it would lead to things. Maybe no. Maybe it would suck or be boring. But it might be worth trying.

People have done it. And it didn't really lead to anything.

Granted, that might have been due to X factor and Y factor... but my point is, people have made sustained, prolonged efforts at keeping the conflict and war plots going on, so (directed at RGS) the suggestion that players only need to take up the mantle and try a little is borderline insulting.

Alright, things have sort of wandered and I didn't want to just ignore your question. So let me try to clarify why me and you weren't really discussing the same things.

People wanted another war, or were complaining about not seeing enough effects of the last one. I, in my usual dickish way said they aren't trying hard enough(this was all just a random though, not really the sort of material I'd have as a first post in an actual topic for discussing). Which I agree is disingenuous to them.  Those people, however, are not the same people who are making sustained prolong efforts at keeping the conflict going. There's a difference between wanting your plots to leave a lasting impression on the world(which I completely agree with you on) and people not feeling involved in plots or feeling that there isn't any sort of war going on.

The difference between those people is that one is hopefully having some fun and making it fun for others too, even if their plans don't always pan out. Where as the other group is expecting all the fun to come to them. I  wasn't talking about the first group of people in my original "random Thought" which this thread was made from.

Is it fair or even accurate to lump players into two separate and distinct groups?

[Molten Heart]

Alright, things have sort of wandered and I didn't want to just ignore your question. So let me try to clarify why me and you weren't really discussing the same things.

People wanted another war, or were complaining about not seeing enough effects of the last one. I, in my usual dickish way said they aren't trying hard enough(this was all just a random though, not really the sort of material I'd have as a first post in an actual topic for discussing). Which I agree is disingenuous to them.  Those people, however, are not the same people who are making sustained prolong efforts at keeping the conflict going. There's a difference between wanting your plots to leave a lasting impression on the world(which I completely agree with you on) and people not feeling involved in plots or feeling that there isn't any sort of war going on.

The difference between those people is that one is hopefully having some fun and making it fun for others too, even if their plans don't always pan out. Where as the other group is expecting all the fun to come to them. I  wasn't talking about the first group of people in my original "random Thought" which this thread was made from.

Is it fair or even accurate to lump players into two separate and distinct groups?

The way I'm reading your post, you're saying there are two types of players.  Group A makes their own plots and enjoys themselves without complaining, they have everything they need/want.  Group B is lazy and doesn't make an effort, they complain and want someone else to make the game fun for them.  Is that what you are saying?

[Barzalene]

I feel so silly posting just to say Yes! Yes! I think Venomz and Delirium are really on to something here.

[LauraMars]

This discussion may be detrimental to the game, as it revolves around the game's current main arc.  Some things I've read here touch far too close on things I've seen developing in the world, things that are in the works and may not have hit the scene, yet.  Maybe our energy is better focused on playing the game and writing taste descriptions for baby items.

I'm inclined to agree.  Please be careful when talking about the "current" state of the game and what people may or may not be doing with their characters.

[RogueGunslinger]

Alright, things have sort of wandered and I didn't want to just ignore your question. So let me try to clarify why me and you weren't really discussing the same things.

People wanted another war, or were complaining about not seeing enough effects of the last one. I, in my usual dickish way said they aren't trying hard enough(this was all just a random though, not really the sort of material I'd have as a first post in an actual topic for discussing). Which I agree is disingenuous to them.  Those people, however, are not the same people who are making sustained prolong efforts at keeping the conflict going. There's a difference between wanting your plots to leave a lasting impression on the world(which I completely agree with you on) and people not feeling involved in plots or feeling that there isn't any sort of war going on.

The difference between those people is that one is hopefully having some fun and making it fun for others too, even if their plans don't always pan out. Where as the other group is expecting all the fun to come to them. I  wasn't talking about the first group of people in my original "random Thought" which this thread was made from.

Is it fair or even accurate to lump players into two separate and distinct groups?

The way I'm reading your post, you're saying there are two types of players.  Group A makes their own plots and enjoys themselves without complaining, they have everything they need/want.  Group B is lazy and doesn't make an effort, they complain and want someone else to make the game fun for them.  Is that what you are saying?

No. I'm saying that if you're involved in plots surrounding the war, you're likely not going to be complaining about nothing happening involving the war. You might complain about not affecting anything. But that's not what we were talking about.

I feel so silly posting just to say Yes! Yes! I think Venomz and Delirium are really on to something here.

Yeah, going to have to give a +1 to those ideas, they're brilliant.

[TheWanderer]

We need goals? Like resources? We have goals. I was pretty sure we were all genocidal maniacs striving to destroy the other's city and way of life entirely, with a thought that each city was an affront to each of our respective gods.

World domination, baby. Fuck your resources.

[Eyeball]

EDIT: Nevermind.

By the way, I like the idea of water suddenly welling up somewhere in the desert.

[Malken]

WE NEED A WAR

Agreed, or at least more effects from that battle.

Dude, I post random nonsense on the Gdb to keep me sane at work. Don't take what I post seriously. Beside, I haven't played in months and months and probably will never play again. I'm just secretly in love with delirium and the Gdb is the only way I get to know what she's up to.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Delirium is a unique individual. You must up your game, son. In game.

See what I did there?

[Adhira]

There's great ideas in here. And as some reassurance staff actually had a similar conversation to this a few months ago. In fact the title of our forum thread was - How to have a WAR - brainstorming thread. We are very aware that war is a difficult thing to both sustain, and make accessible to players. Hopefully with new staff coming on board you'll see more obvious signs of things in this area.

I am going to go ahead and lock this thread now, since it's touching on things that are treading close to IC and the temptation keeps leaning towards current game events, characters, and things that may be developing.