GMH Conflict: Reflections and Replies

[Delirium]

I like what I've seen in game recently. It seems well thought out to provide an ideal type and source of conflict with a lot of power given to the players in how they handle it (with appropriate pushbacks I'm assuming) and with plenty of opportunities for nuance and side plots. Simple on the surface with tons of potential if just a few people pick up the ball and run with it.

I don't really have any comment on the rest of this because the past is the past.

[Nergal]

Plan #3 that I was referring to in my first post in this thread has culminated into this: http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,50315.msg918933.html#new

My hope is that it will encourage increased conflict in the form of competition, both internally (proving you're the best employee) and externally (poaching employees from other clans when their contract is up).

[Ender]

I dunno how I feel about staff taking away power from PC leaders by removing their ability to grant life oaths. It kind of... I dunno. I really don't see how this 'expands' options for anyone.

This is a wonderful change, and I think it creates far more for the game than it removed.

• It gives access to more in depth roles in the GMHs to PCs who would have been previously discouraged by having those roles be lifesworn.
• It creates more opportunity for conflict because now any potential leader PC can see someone in a GMH uniform and know they're still potential employees because they are not completely beholden to the House that employs them.
• It gives leader PCs more incentive to create interest for their employees because they no longer have the comfort of knowing no matter how bored that employee is, his only recourse would be storage, death, or being hunted as a traitor.
  
• It creates a much lower barrier to entry for a PC considering joining a GMH, because they no longer have to worry about being press ganged into life swearing, so if they don't enjoy the experience they can quit when their contract's up and move on to another role with the same character.

[Saellyn]

So is there a new benefit to taking a life oath? It used to be, to get into a position of authority, you had to take a life oath. That's now no longer the case, I imagine, so then what is the benefit of taking up a life oath in a GMH?

[Delirium]

Um, all of the kajillion other benefits of having the backing of a massive merchant house ... FOR LIFE.

You used to have to life-swear just to be a basic level employee, much less in a position of authority.

I'm very glad to see this change, I love how many opportunities this opens up. Life swearing had a stifling effect on clans.

[Nergal]

So is there a new benefit to taking a life oath? It used to be, to get into a position of authority, you had to take a life oath. That's now no longer the case, I imagine, so then what is the benefit of taking up a life oath in a GMH?

- Secures your position in a clan for life.
- Offers a path toward adoption into the House as a family member with signet ring, last name, and the nifty -di/-da thing for Kurac. (may also come with marriage).
- Significantly more coveted than it was previously, because it is rare.
- Now life oaths aren't a requirement for being promoted to a certain rank in the clan (except for family-level ranks).

[Desertman]

Keeping in mind as well that just because you can't take an "Official House Backed Life Oath" from one of your employees, that doesn't mean you can't take an unofficial one from them.

There are just some things you do in a House where you know that for as long as that leader you did it with is alive....you can never leave.

Noble Lord FatPants has you assassinate Lord Templar StickInButt for him, and you do it.....there may not be any sort of official lifesworn oath involved, but let's be honest.....Noble Lord FatPants is never letting you go alive because you now have the dirt/the secrets to ruin him.

I've played leaders before where I didn't take life oaths exactly, but I brought people in with me so deep that we knew we would always have to be together.

I've played leaders before as well where there were no official terms of service in regards to length of employment, but I made them agree with me on a personal level that, "If I do this for you, you are mine for X amount of time, and if you break that contract with me, the House/Company won't have an issue with it, but I will come for you personally. Agreed?".......I never once had them not agree.

This isn't a rule saying, "You can't force someone into life service to you.", it is a rule saying, "The House won't officially back your bullshit, but if your dick is big enough, you can personally enforce your life minions.".

(Let's be honest, if you are in any position to actually hire minions, your dick SHOULD be big enough to rule them through fear, if nothing else. However, you are more likely to get useful unofficial lifesworn minions through just being the sort of leader they never want to leave. Bring them into the rabbit hole with you so deep that they know they are part of your most trusted circle, and they won't ever want to leave that circle. You will be providing them with too much fun.)

I like it.

[hopeandsorrow]

I like this Change.

[Desertman]

I think that if we made the GMH's all create the same goods rather than specializing in different areas we would have a nasty bloody war for about a RL month, and then one, one-stop GMH that made everything, and murdered every single indy group that ever tried to poke their head up to be competition again. --- Which would be even less entertaining than what we have now.

This is where you step in as a staffer and don't let "the armies go to war".

Staff can and should regulate this. Let the players drive their player-on-player conflict, but keep IC reasons in place with upper command to prevent the Houses from going to annihilation war. The only way such a war would happen is if staff allowed it to happen and orchestrated it.

We both know players can't wipe out Houses without staff helping them, and in reality, doing it.

Give the upper command the mindset that a few hunters and merchants (the PC's) going the way of the dodo from time to time through House conflict in the field is an expected and acceptable cost of doing business.

"Yes First Hunter? You say one of House Salarr's hundreds of hunters killed one of ours? What do you want me to do about it? Fuck off First Hunter. I am busy and doing very important things. You take care of this shit yourself. Don't come to me every time you take a piss either. For fuck's sake. Be a leader and fuck their shit up right back or I will get someone with a spine.".

This keeps them from IC'ly going to war to wipe each other out and keeps an avenue open for players to compete with each other on the economic front in a meaningful top to bottom way.

The only way it would result in what you are saying it would result in is if staff did it. Players literally can't.

As for these GMH's murdering every single indy group in game, you can easily remedy this too. Preach the mindset from upper command that a House with thousands of employees and multiple compounds throughout the world simply doesn't care about the tiny flea on the back of the tiny insect that is comparably these indy groups. It would be like a noble going into the rinth to find that one rinther who owns a silk bracelet to cut their throat for the world to see because they are, "trying to be a noble like me!!!!". Explain it is goofy and silly and makes no IC sense, so don't do it. What can you do? Tax those indy groups for your own PC to PC personal gain in wealth. Utilize them as your merchant House leader to better your own personal goals. Every goal you have doesn't have to be a House-goal. Use them to help facilitate your own personal wealth or use them to help your own personal agenda....and if they won't play ball.....then annihilate them for not bending to your whims (not because you are pretending them selling baskets is ruining your House's market).

When we do as you suggest here we are immediately painted as playing favorites, and trying to railroad PC's into a pre-determined outcome for reasoning ranging from spite, to having a pet avatar in the clan we're protecting, to having beef with the players involved.

It is true that players cannot wipe out an entire GMH without staff support in theory. But they don't need staff support to do it in practice. They just have to murder every single new PC who tries to join a competing clan, thus rendering all other clans virtual, and largely inaccessible to the player base on a day to day level. -- And when we try to step in and remedy this, see above.

I'm fairly sure that these clans wouldn't be able to wipe out entire crews in game without drawing the attention of law enforcement.

However, if they do manage to cleanly wipe out the players in every single other clan in the game without being caught a single time every single time for eternity....they will have won the game.

I just don't think that will happen.

They might wipe out a few players here and there cleanly, but just as often they will fail their assassination attempts and Templars will get involved (PC Templars), and herds will get culled and the circle of life will go on.

You are suggesting that a single clan of players without staff support would be able to infinitely wipe out every other player in every clan in the game and have the political clout IC'ly to never once step on their own dicks for all time.

I just don't see that happening. Will there be ups and downs in the balance of the PC on PC power front? Absolutely. Will there be certain times where one clan appears to be running such a strong PC crew that they are "winning"?

Absolutely. But what's wrong with letting them win for a while? They built an awesome PC crew and the leader has done a great job. Maybe you should just let them win for a little while and enjoy the benefits of their hard work. Maybe not forever, but for a little while? Sure. It is an incentive for others to come along and do the same thing themselves.

But if Armageddon has taught me one thing, it's that getting powerful and getting well known ALWAYS eventually breeds enemies who come after you for no other reason than they want to be the ones to knock you off your throne. It happens every time eventually.

Now, in the extremely unlikely scenario that such a PC crew is created in game who can infinitely rule the game world through attrition on a global scale, then I believe staff should step in and make life a little hard for them to rebalance The Matrix.

How often will that have to happen though?

I think it's a non-issue.

Edited to Add: Also keep in mind that a bloodbath isn't the only end-game either. I would wager that JUST as often as two crews go to war on the PC to PC front with each other, two leaders will see the wisdom in forming an unofficial alliance that will last a long time to the mutual benefit of both crews. Then just as often one will betray the other, so on and so forth, and the circle of life/death continues.

Now, alliances would seem to suggest going back towards the same old system we have now where everyone apparently agrees to play nice to keep their monopolies in balance. It's not. The difference here is the alliances are happening on the PC to PC front and will only stay in play for as long as the PC's in game nurture them/stay alive to keep them intact.

In my opinion, that's a much better system that puts more power into the hands of the players and makes things  a lot less stagnant.

[Desertman]

Plan #3 that I was referring to in my first post in this thread has culminated into this: http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,50315.msg918933.html#new

My hope is that it will encourage increased conflict in the form of competition, both internally (proving you're the best employee) and externally (poaching employees from other clans when their contract is up).

Also, this is the shit.

[Desertman]

Since I first replied to Dman in the RAT, I'll reply to him again here:

I may never have been high enough up in a Merchant House to ever get to that incredibly covert House on House economic conflict driven by the lack of resources in a resource poor environment.

What I can tell you is I've never actually seen it as a player.......ever.

I have never once seen House Hunter B lead his/her group of hunters with the mindset that the hunters/merchants from House A are their competition.

It may happen and it's just so incredibly covert nobody ever hears about it and these House Hunters are so incredibly good at keeping secrets the secrets never ever get out to anyone.

But, then again, I think it's probably more likely that the conflict being spoken about is so high up the chain that most House employees never get to even experience it, so in reality, it is pointless on the front I am talking about......which is making conflict for House players from top to bottom....not just for the extremely sparing few who happen to break through to find out what's going on.

I have had similar experiences as a player. But one has to accept that their personal experience is only a small fraction of the over all activity going on in game. We are bursting with stories of ground level characters being used as tools by the powerful without ever knowing the reason behind what they are doing.

Also, while roads are made from oil and fuel is made from oil I can tell you that BIG 4 Road Construction does not consider Exxon Valdez a competitor, and they never compete.

That reasoning doesn't work for the same reason Wal-Mart doesn't compete with Target because clothes hangers are made from plastic and both deal in clothes hangers. They might compete in the "clothes hanger market", but they aren't competing for plastic. You know who is? The two companies who make plastic.
The reasons corporations compete, and this in my opinion translates to the game world, is because their end-game is the same.

Hamburgers and Steak are both made from cows, but McDonalds is not competing with five star high-end steak houses.....they just aren't in the same markets. They don't care about each other. Their end-game isn't the same.

This is untrue. The two companies in your example do not compete with one another directly, but they do compete with one another in attempting to secure a better deal than the other has from their suppliers.

For example, I work for an export company that specializes in automobiles and while we compete with other export companies that specialize in automobiles directly, we compete indirectly with every exporter in attempting to secure better freight rates with our shipping partners, who pit us against one another for space on their vessels to drive their own profits up.

It's complicated, but it's there, and as the Director for my geographic region, I spend equal time focused on my end user competition as I do on my supply chain competition because both are equally important to our bottom line.

How often do the guys on the ground floor know about or even give a shit about any of that in your company?

Sure, you know about it. You are high enough up the chain to care about it.

How much does the guy throwing boxes around the warehouse (The House Hunter?) care about what you are seeing and how often does it provide conflict for them on an economic scale?

You are just pointing out exactly what I'm saying. The extremely high-end portion of the employment chain knows about and is involved in this conflict. The actual "players" aren't. They never see it, and really, they don't give a shit because they never see it.

You are describing the difference between two guys fighting each other in Home Depot over the last rake on the shelf in the State, and two CEO's looking at charts in their offices and shuffling some numbers around to make a difference in the final decimals in the production line.

Are both conflict and competition for resources through strategy? Absolutely.

Is one a lot more fun than the other for the actual people on the ground (the players)? Absolutely.

If you told me you wanted me to play a game and one game was the guy moving around decimals in his office to edge out economic competitors and get ahead of them, and the other was two guys fighting over a rake on the ground floor in Home Depot...I would pic Rake Wars every time. Why? Because it's a lot more fun.


Either way, we are both just arguing complete hypotheticals at this point for a system that doesn't and probably never will exist.

All I'm saying is we have seen the outcome of the current system. Sometimes it is jumping, and a lot of times you can't beat people into taking roles for any meaningful length of time in the House.

I've IC'ly been involved in plots designed for no other reason than to try and put people in those Houses because those Houses couldn't attract players.

I'm just trying to be helpful by telling you what I would personally enjoy as a player and what I believe other players would also enjoy. If nothing else I hope you guys see some of the ideas and even if you don't take them all, consider them on some level and use them maybe to come up with your own ideas (probably even better ideas considering you have the staff vantage point of view I don't have).

I'm just the guy who plays the game and tries to make the game fun for other people without having any staff powers. This is my opinion based on that experience. This is the sort of thing I have seen that people like in game, or at least the people who have played with me personally.

[KankWhisperer]

I don't care for the change all that much. I think that current lifesworn should be grandfathered in if they choose.

For me personally it added an element of trust where you could get those players in the know right away. Now I may be more stingy with information which isn't fun.

[Desertman]

I don't care for the change all that much. I think that current lifesworn should be grandfathered in if they choose.

For me personally it added an element of trust where you could get those players in the know right away. Now I may be more stingy with information which isn't fun.

I didn't consider currently lifesworn PC's.

Are they just becoming un-lifesworn?

Hmmm.

[555]

Plan #3 that I was referring to in my first post in this thread has culminated into this: http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,50315.msg918933.html#new

My hope is that it will encourage increased conflict in the form of competition, both internally (proving you're the best employee) and externally (poaching employees from other clans when their contract is up).

Also, this is the shit.

I concur.

[Nergal]

I don't care for the change all that much. I think that current lifesworn should be grandfathered in if they choose.

For me personally it added an element of trust where you could get those players in the know right away. Now I may be more stingy with information which isn't fun.

I didn't consider currently lifesworn PC's.

Are they just becoming un-lifesworn?

Hmmm.

For the most part, yes. Though that doesn't mean they can't be life-oathed again by the House.

[Nergal]

I don't care for the change all that much. I think that current lifesworn should be grandfathered in if they choose.

For me personally it added an element of trust where you could get those players in the know right away. Now I may be more stingy with information which isn't fun.

I didn't feel that, in the long term, it benefited the "field of conflict" to have a class of employees that could be implicitly trusted with information because they could be killed for trying to share it or for trying to leave the House.

[nauta]

I don't care for the change all that much. I think that current lifesworn should be grandfathered in if they choose.

For me personally it added an element of trust where you could get those players in the know right away. Now I may be more stingy with information which isn't fun.

I didn't feel that, in the long term, it benefited the "field of conflict" to have a class of employees that could be implicitly trusted with information because they could be killed for trying to share it or leave the House.

Hey -- no horse in this debate, but I like reading, and I couldn't parse your sentence, Nergal.  I'm probably missing something.  Are you saying:

having a class of employees (lifesworn) didn't benefit the field of conflict, and here's why:

o they are implicitly trusted with information

Why are they implicitly trusted with information?

o because they either (a) could be killed for trying to share it or (b) leave the house...



I do like the point that conflict suffers when you have a class or group that is implicitly trusted (cf. tribes in the wilderness vs. lonefoot elves in the rinth).

[555]

I don't care for the change all that much. I think that current lifesworn should be grandfathered in if they choose.

For me personally it added an element of trust where you could get those players in the know right away. Now I may be more stingy with information which isn't fun.

I didn't feel that, in the long term, it benefited the "field of conflict" to have a class of employees that could be implicitly trusted with information because they could be killed for trying to share it or leave the House.

What? There's people that can be implicitly trusted?! Or ever fully trusted, like, ever? News to me, I must find them.

[Nergal]

Edited my post to be clearer, but life-oathed people could have been implicitly trusted because they (a) could be killed for trying to share information or (b) could be killed for trying to leave the house with the information.

[Asanadas]

I feel like this is a good change. In my experience, there's people who 'try out' merchant houses, and get stuck in the clan compound and don't really have a stake/presence outside of it anymore. When that burns out, they can't really leave. Plus there was no true draw from outside to pull them away, because of the low-tier life oath and the mutual understanding that trying to recruit someone out from under a GMH was more trouble than it's worth.

In this case, with people staying more as contracted agents, I think it helps the whole dynamic.

[Malken]

Nice!

I now want to attempt the achievement of trying out every single Houses with the same character.

[whitt]

Edited my post to be clearer, but life-oathed people could have been implicitly trusted because they (a) could be killed for trying to share information or (b) could be killed for trying to leave the house with the information.

Is this no longer true?  I doubt it.  I'm quite sure they can still be killed for either (a) or (b) or even (c) none of the above.  So what has changed is the employee's security of being life sworn.  It's something those PCs strived for and earned. 

While this is a reasonable change for those "in the pipe" I would be very disappointed if I was a life-sworn employee for a half-dozen years and suddenly I'm told that I'm not.  Those folks didn't make the decision lightly.

One vote for grandfathering in the old lifesworn PCs, unless something is horribly wrong with the clan and there are no PCs to be lifesworn with.

 

[Nergal]

Of course, PCs can always be killed. I doubt anyone will argue otherwise.

However, the idea that a PC can be trusted with information because they are life-sworn is dispelled. There are now other real factors at play when a leader has to decide who to trust, or who not to trust.

As far as current life-sworn employees in GMHs, the opportunity is open to those who wish to preserve their oath. There's nothing being taken away that they can't earn back with a reassessment.

[KankWhisperer]

Of course, PCs can always be killed. I doubt anyone will argue otherwise.

However, the idea that a PC can be trusted with information because they are life-sworn is dispelled. There are now other real factors at play when a leader has to decide who to trust, or who not to trust.

As far as current life-sworn employees in GMHs, the opportunity is open to those who wish to preserve their oath. There's nothing being taken away that they can't earn back with a reassessment.

This is only true in human only leadership GMH.

[555]

I'd think greater reasons to trust someone enough to clue them in on the details would be the perceived character and motives of the PC in question, to be decided on an individual basis. Lifesworn simply means they weren't "allowed" to leave the house, which is kind of a pain in the rump when someone isn't happy and would like to pursue other options, and is in good enough standing and well trusted enough to keep their mouth shut about some things, and this simply puts more options on your plate when dealing with subordinates, as well as providing incentive to not be a dick to the help, and keep them happy.