Re: Zalanthan nobility

[Inks]

There are already enough nobles.  

[boog]

There are already enough nobles.  

Debatable!

[Inks]

8-10 In one city Is pretty top-heavy.

[Barsook]

Yeah, along with the Templars.  That's like 11-13 right there.

[RogueGunslinger]

8-10 In one city Is pretty top-heavy.

Are there seriously that many? I never see more than a handful of nobles around.

[Barsook]

Tuluk does has 6, I think.

[Talia]

8-10 In one city Is pretty top-heavy.

Are there seriously that many? I never see more than a handful of nobles around.

At a maximum, each of the cities has 6 nobles at a time. Often it is less than this.

[Barsook]

8-10 In one city Is pretty top-heavy.

So that number is really the noble + templar number.  But still, that's a lot of leadership.

[Inks]

Yeah it is nobles + Templars

[Patuk]

I also think 6 is more than enough for either city.

[Centurion]

11-13? Hardly. Not in the North anyway. 6 is a great number + templars. I think it allows for a lot of opportunity, and stops noble characters from getting boring so quick, cause they can actually have a social life with those of their caste. Want to have an actual party, you invite everyone, and you might get half (due to diff playtimes and such), so you still at least get 3-4 nobles, maybe 5.

[HavokBlue]

There is a very high turnover for rate on northern nobles, I think.

[valeria]

11-13? Hardly. Not in the North anyway. 6 is a great number + templars. I think it allows for a lot of opportunity, and stops noble characters from getting boring so quick, cause they can actually have a social life with those of their caste. Want to have an actual party, you invite everyone, and you might get half (due to diff playtimes and such), so you still at least get 3-4 nobles, maybe 5.

This.  I've played a noble as one of three nobles and I was constantly bored.  Having six nobles allows for exponentially more interaction and politics than having three nobles.  Which means nobles stick around longer and make more plots.

[Delirium]

I have this theory that every noble house could be made virtual and the game would actually improve for it.

[Patuk]

I have this theory that every noble house could be made virtual and the game would actually improve for it.

Of the game's playable noble houses, about half of them deal only in virtual work anyway.

[nauta]

I have this theory that every noble house could be made virtual and the game would actually improve for it.

I sometimes have thought that too, I mean: that's 12 PCs (or whatever the number is north/south) that could be in the rinth!

[RogueGunslinger]

Ehh, I think we definitely need some noble houses.

[Quell]

I have this theory that every noble house could be made virtual and the game would actually improve for it.

It might be interesting to replace the nobles with high-ranked aides to keep the political plots going, but also allow for less restricted interaction.

[Delirium]

I have this theory that every noble house could be made virtual and the game would actually improve for it.

It might be interesting to replace the nobles with high-ranked aides to keep the political plots going, but also allow for less restricted interaction.

Yep. Even the highest ranked aide is at least somewhat grittier than a noble, and has far more interaction possibilities.

[Down Under]

Disagree.

Nobles can be gritty as fuck.

[Beethoven]

Noble is a tough and isolated role to play and can feel a lot like animating an NPC at times (not that I would know what animating an NPC feels like, I suppose) but they bring the oppression and social inequality of the world to life, and I think city play would suffer without them.

[Delirium]

Ideally they do, except they don't (with the exception of the occasional very skilled player). It's a difficult role that often seems empty of the vibrancy and authenticity available elsewhere in commoner roles, unless the noble is surrounded by a large enough cabal of employees and/or associates. This means that when those roles are interesting and lively, there is an inevitable upswing in noble house employees, which means a correlating upswing in visible quality of life, quantity of silk, and abundance of coin... which is, to my mind, a large portion of the reason Tuluk has the reputation it does: too many noble houses. They compete for players, for understandable reasons, leaving it difficult if not nearly impossible for a player character to remain a lower-class citizen unattached to the nobility's strings. Unless they want to be very isolated. So they get bored, die, and/or store. And the cycle continues...

[Malken]

We should open up a tribe of nobles that live in the middle of nowhere, like the red desert or something.

[Beethoven]

I think one problem is that nobles care too much for their low-ranked and newly-hired servants or affiliates. Why should they care if Joe grebber called their generic new aide a taffer? They shouldn't be going after Joe; they should be telling their servant to stop bothering them with their petty kankshit.

[Delirium]

They care because they are bored out of their skulls.

They also care because good employees are so hard to find that their value is unnaturally inflated.

Should they care? No. Will they care? Yes. It's a symptom of a larger problem that is unlikely to be fixed until the root cause is addressed.