Murder. Corruption. Betrayal.

[Carnage]

By definition, loyalty and expendebility don't go well together.  If you start pushing your guards into suicide missions, then before long you can expect muttering, desertion, and even betrayal once the rest of the guard force begins figuring out what's going on.

Right. We've obviously never had a such thing as suicide bombers. Not in the real world, not in Zalanthas.

To add to the problem, if anybody glimpses your assassin, or captures or kills him, they now have a direct link to you as soon as somebody mentions that they saw that guy in the uniform of House X.

We all know how difficult it is to remove clothing and put on another set. :roll:

I could go on, but I won't.

Okay. Then why is there more to your post?  

I don't contest that there have been guard-assassins in the past, I don't even contest that the situations have been valid and ICly viable, even though I don't know that they have been.  But the way I see it is that telling your guards to go assassinate somebody is little more than a half-assed way to get them off their barstools when they're bored as shit and have begun logging in less.

Right. So basically, guards are supposed to sit around and look pretty. They're sire as hell not as well trained as that Rinth rat who learned to fight by kicking the crap out of rats.

After gathering information, it seems to me that there are clans up north that have succesfully dealt with their noble guard force, and if what they do works, then they should remain intact.  I haven't noticed as much success with House Tor in the south, but considering the enormous amount of potential it has for Scorpions, I wouldn't want to see it removed.

By 'gathering information', do you mean IMing people and going 'lol how does ur clan work??'  

You act as if we suggest to make it so that players are never given the opportunity to play a guard, and nothing can be further from the truth.

How many people are going to special app to play guards? There's going to be two possibilities of what's going to happen: The first is that guard numbers will stay the same. However, Naephet is going to take even longer to respond to special apps because it's clogged up with house guard apps. Great The second is that house guard PC numbers are going to drop. With less PCs in a house, chances are good that there's going to be less servants. And without either of the two, the role of noble is completely useless. You've just destroyed five clans then. Even better.

Then there's a possibility that you'll want to lynch out people such as bards and make them special app only, or magickers special app only, or crafters special app only, or whatever the flavor of the week is.

But not every clan needs a PC guard force.  Some people will still want to play guards, and they should be given the opportunity.  But without special apping, they certainly don't require the option of playing a guard everywhere.  The minor shift in focus that we suggest would both streamline the playerbase of paramilitary types, and make guard positions that much more elusive.  Very positive effects.  Do you have any better ideas to accomplish those same effects?

Actually, yes I do. And it doesn't come down to forcing players to mail the MUD account or wait long and tedious periods: At any time, an immortal can tell a overzealous recruiter to stop. OMG! IMAGINE THAT! AND THERE'S NO RIDICULOUS SYSTEMS IMPLEMENTED HOLY SHIT I WIN!!!!!!!!111

Ahh, forgive me Carnage!

Apology accepted.

[Quirk]

I said a few words about this in the crim-code debate, and I'll expand them a little here.

House guards should not be used as assassins to off important people. For that, you ideally want a Special Ops type branch of the House who do not advertise their affiliations and are kept for spying and assassination purposes. The public embarrassment to the House if one of your personal guards is spotted in the attempt and the templars have to ask you to give her up would be considerable.

However, where a beating or even killing needs to be inflicted on someone who doesn't have any political sway, someone who's annoyed the noble somehow, the guards should be quite capable of handling it. The corps of guards is not a subtle tool, but I imagine it would be a not infrequently employed means of intimidation should a commoner fail to comply with a noble's wishes.

I do think there are too many guards in game, and that it does dilute the harshness of the game to a large extent, but I can see uses for them. I would prefer to see a vastly more discerning hiring policy, but a House with only a couple of guards may have difficulties in gathering a critical mass for internal RP, so I understand partially where the recruiters are coming from. Nonetheless, having such a number of jobs that almost ensure food and shelter for life softens things hugely.

Quirk

[Malifaxis]

Since we're in a fit of proving superiority...

Right. We've obviously never had a such thing as suicide bombers. Not in the real world, not in Zalanthas

Loyalty:  A feeling or attitude of devoted attachment and affection. Often used in the plural: My loyalties lie with my family.

Fanaticism:  Excessive enthusiasm, unreasoning zeal, or wild and extravagant notions, on any subject, especially religion; religious frenzy.

We all know how difficult it is to remove clothing and put on another set.

We all know how difficult it is to copy/paste an sdesc.

Right. So basically, guards are supposed to sit around and look pretty. They're sire as hell not as well trained as that Rinth rat who learned to fight by kicking the crap out of rats.

IRL I have fought those trained in dojos and those trained on the streets.  Know what the difference is?  Style.  That's it.  Offensive fighting comes down to one basic principle:  Intersecting your own matter pattern with the matter pattern of another being in a painful manner.  Doesn't matter where you learned or from who, what matters is how much you learned, and how well you apply it.  A rinth rat is used to fighting for his/her life every day of the week, a trained guardsman spars constantly and receives lessons.  Difference?  I think so.  The rinth rat dies if he doesn't quite grasp the concept, the guardsman gets another chance.  

By 'gathering information', do you mean IMing people and going 'lol how does ur clan work??'

Can you say a single damn thing that isn't derogatory?

Actually, yes I do. And it doesn't come down to forcing players to mail the MUD account or wait long and tedious periods: At any time, an immortal can tell a overzealous recruiter to stop.

Can and will are completely different.  For a long time, I knew of one house that is abso-fucking-lutely over the goddamn top with recruitment.  If that is still happening, I don't know, but it was ridiculous.  I do agree that players should not spec app guards, it would bog down everything hideously.

[Krath]

Owned...Was going to write something similar to Malifaxis' but he said all i wanted to and more.

[Lasakar]

I have the feeling, that is the next thread Sanvean will close... :roll:

[Twilight]

The only thing I have seen which I think in one jolt contributed a deal to the harshness of the game was the stun code, especially right after it went in and things still needed to be tweaked a little.  Other than that, it all ebbs and flows, but the overall potential degree of harshness is the same.

I remember periods of time when being a combat character was considered twinkish by the playerbase apparently and times when everyone seemed to be playing one.  When nobody seemed to be playing a combat character, going outside a city was suicidal for a lot of people, but the NPCs out there weren't actually that bad.  When everyone was playing combat characters, there were NPCs out there that were balanced to take care of combat characters.  Overall shifts in the PC population really have been countered by shifts in the NPC population, from my perspective.  This means that over time, while the critters out there change in difficulty, the overall harshness of the game from that perspective hasn't changed.

Those same PC fluctuations obviously carry over into the game world.  With a prevalance of combat characters, or a lack of such, everyone is pretty much still balanced, overall.  I remember when Tor pretty much had the -only- decent combat characters in Allanak outside of the Rinth.  If you get imbalances like that, things tend to come along to, um, rebalance things.

Darn, getting all nostalgic now, wanting to play a Tor again.  *sniffs*

[spawnloser]

Someone said that Borsail and Tor have conflict (I forget who after reading all of this and don't feel like going back to check)...why don't Oash and Borsail?  They are both top-tier Houses and should be more in competition than Borsail and Tor.  Borsail should be amused by the mid-tier House's attempts to one up them...Tor should be more interested in just getting a higher rank than the next one up the ladder.

[j0ram]

j0ram's take on this, since apparently he was one of the evil people at the heart of this original conversation.

It isn't really a matter of "not as much death". The key was fear. The mud just isn't as frightening anymore.

I remember, back in "the day", when there were people that were just scary. Certain templars, nobles, even merchants, members of certain crime groups. Back when you there was very -little- contact between the north and south. When you could live in the south and go your whole pc life without seeing another pc northerner. Yet, there were certain people in the north that had such reputations that they were frightening.

The game just had a more intense atmosphere. Tight knuckles and sweaty palms. Individuals had enough power to make or break entire clans, because their own clans were so powerful.

There are two main reasons behind this, that I see. One is likely to just cause flames, so I'll let it go without saying. The other is the fact that the game has become, in my opinion, too user friendly. It's too easy to survive on your own. Be it as a hunter, gatherer, criminal, whatever. In the before-years, it was very rare to find someone who could make it on their own, the resources simply were not available to the individual. Money, food, water. So what did they do? They had to join a clan. -Everyone- was in a clan. It makes it an entire different kind of game when you shift from player vs player interactions to clan vs clan interactions. Players still plot, but without the strong clan influence, plots are not as widely spread (and no, I am -not- saying that modern day Arm does not have wide spread plots).

So my suggestion, find ways to pull people back into the clans. Right now there are more unclanned people than there are clanned people (from my point of view). If you clan them, things will come.

---end post---

There, now stop pestering me, Shal.

[EvilRoeSlade]

By 'gathering information', do you mean IMing people and going 'lol how does ur clan work??'

I think I'm done pretending that I respect your opinion enough to argue.

[Tamarin]

Someone said that Borsail and Tor have conflict (I forget who after reading all of this and don't feel like going back to check)...why don't Oash and Borsail?

They do...they are in serious competition.

[aeshyw]

Animosity between a few PCs does not competition between noble houses make.   Even dislike or disdain does not competition make.  The disparity in resources and power between the top of the Upper Tier and the middle of the Middle Tier is massive.

[spawnloser 2lazy2login]

Yes, I know, uberjazz.  That was a rhetorical question, which I thought went without saying to those that read my entire post.

[Ix Machina]

I'm only going to step in once more to say:

While discussion and any opinions that spur discussion on this subject have validity and are interesting to read, the flames and attacks on each other for having said opinions are not.

You are not children, I hope. This is not the SA forums, so your caustic slings toward those with differing opinions are not welcome here. If you want to vent your frustrations, then do them somewhere else, just not in response to another person's valid point of view without having to resort to extreme exaggeration and blatant flaming to get a response.

The goal of any discussion is not to make someone else look stupid. It is to provide one's opinions and reasons for those opinions. If you cannot post without refraining from being disrespectful and inflammatory, then simply do not post at all.

This is the only thing I'm going to say on the matter. If you think your post inspired this, it probably did. We don't expect rainbows and kittens, but it isn't too much to hope for, to expect mature discussion on a topic that is relevant to the game you play.

Thank you.

Ix

Back to the topic at hand.

[Quirk]

I don't think the solution you're suggesting works with the way the game-world is currently set up, j0ram, and here's why.


In former times, PC clan leaders were likely made less aware of their relatively low status in the clan and the restrictions this would put on their leeway to alter relationships with other clans. PC nobles these days are rarely of a level that they can decide House policy, and PC templars have generally been made aware that they cannot throw their weight around as if they were a red robe or black robe without actually being a red robe or black robe. The end result is that, while clan interactions are vastly more realistic than before, individual PCs do not have the same power to make or break other clans.

With more restrained relations between Houses than previously, being in a clan does not necessarily offer any more room for plotting than an imaginative independent can come up with on their own. It should also be noted that the Houses have only a tiny fraction of the population in their service, and that there is no good reason why the majority of PCs should be serving in one.

Rindan previously came up with the suggestion that the game needed more small clans, commoner extended families and tribes, which would be of a scale where PC leadership could legitimately decide policy on their behalf. Although there would be a danger that their PC population would warp their IC influence and power (much as happens with the Byn), I think this would resolve many of the issues implicit in keeping the big Houses handled in a realistic manner. How precisely those small clans should be dealt with is a question for another thread.

Quirk

[mansa]

I would hate to see Oash disappear as an option to play.  I think they have a very valid part of the game world as a whole.  Perhaps we need another recruitment push for new people...yet trying to keep the 'harshness' of the world going.  I see small steps, so far, in making it a bit more hard to live in the citystates.  I like the current changes.

[EvilRoeSlade]

I do agree that players should not spec app guards, it would bog down everything hideously.

Oftentimes I find myself adopting a more mild stance just to deal with the arguments against my position.  The reason I argue for guards to be specially applied isn't because I want to see it bog down the special app system, but because I think if it was changed to special app then most if not everyone would stop bothering to play guards in the restricted houses at all.

Where would this leave us?  Lets start by taking a look at where we are now.  Maybe a guard can function as an assassin, even though that's obviously not really what guards are for.  Is every PC guard in the house an assassin then?  No, of course not.  What it comes down to is a bunch of people that are bored and aren't logging in just so that the one guard that's an assassin has a cover of sorts, and doesn't stand out.  Is that a good use of PC resources?  I think not.

Now suppose we restricted guards to one clan in each city-state.  In the south it would be Tor, in the north it would be Winrothol.  I have no idea if Winrothol would be a good choice, but other people seem to think so.  The other clans wouldn't be shut down, they simply wouldn't hire guards anymore.  Because of this, the clans that do hire guards have a benefit in that they can pick and choose who they want to hire, rather than being forced into a frenzy in which they attempt to recruit everybody that they can.  Tor in the south, for instance would have a much larger playerscape to draw on, and missions in the wastes would suddenly occur much more frequently.  These changes would draw a lot of PCs to Tor.  Perhaps not all of them would actually get into Tor, but that isn't a bad thing.  A noble house's need for guards is fixed, and their turnover rate is very low.  It IS hard for a commoner to get into one, and most will simply dream about it their whole lives.

Lets examine the supposed negative impacts.  Would Tor suddenly gain a huge amount of power over Oash and Borsail?  I think not.  Unless Oash and Borsail are doing something odd, then they won't need their guards to do anything but protect the estate, the family, and perhaps the higher-up commoners serving the house.  Sure, Tor might be able to draw assassins from the ranks of their guards, but they'd have to deal with the risk that the guard would be recognized as being a former employer of their House.  As for the other Houses, lets not act as if they are suddenly devoid of assassins when the occasion to use them is right.  Using a House Guard for the job is but one option of many.  I don't think I need to explain this, as I'm sure you all can use your own ingenuity as an adequate substitute.

I don't agree that Oash should be closed, or any other clan for the matter.  I don't like the clan, it has no nobles half the time, and I've never met a PC in it whom I thought was particularly well-played, but for now I'm limiting my argument to the exclusion of PC guards from Oash, and not the abolishment of Oash altogether.

The main reason I suggest this change is because while Oash, Tor, and Borsail are distinct entities, their PC guards are really pretty much exactly the same clan, except that they get different gear when they stick with that clan long enough.  I won't go so far as to say that we don't need PC guards at all, but I will say that we don't need three of what amounts to the exact same clan.  Instead we should pool the clan-base into Tor, which has the most potential and in my opinion, could go the farthest with an increased playerbase.

[spawnloser]

I would suggest if only one, not only one, and have it be per House, all Houses, period, as a barest minimum.

If it was only one, however, the issue would be that no noble's guard would be worth anything because they would suck.  Noone to train you means very little training...unless you were good already, which does sound appealing, but they would still not get much better with only a dummy to spar with.  If anything, I would suggest two per House, with some exceptions.  Noble House are not an exception, Kadius and Salarr would be two per city, Nenyuk...I don't think I've ever seen a PC guard so that's a moot point, and Kurac maybe something like two per location that they operate openly from, and finally Militia possibly only two per city...maybe three, depending on how heavy a soldier presence the IMMs want, I suppose..  Within those limits, one of these guards can be anything that they are qualified to be.  This would make more people work to be good so that there can be 'interviews' for being a guard where they are given a good interview and they basically have to 'audition' possibly by showing how good they actually are.  This would encourage people to go do stuff and try to make contacts so that when someone dies they can get their job...maybe encourage more wacky fun with people trying to kill for those jobs.  It would be mayhem, and frankly, I'm starting to like it.

However, I would not suggest instantly telling people they have to quit or something...give anyone the option to retire, if they would like too, I suppose, though I wouldn't in that position.  Then, no House that excedes their limits would be allowed to recruit until they drop below the limit.  Just to clarify, the numbers I used, were made up.  I'm throwing them out for people to possibly say what they think on them, or make up their own numbers and say why they like them instead.  One thing I can say for certain on them, however, is that I do not think any House that has only one location should have any less than two for the reason I cited above.  I will admit that some locations with more could possibly do with less than I listed.

In addition, I believe one aide-like person should be allowed, especially for Houses that have more than one family person directing stuff about...like several noble Houses at different times that I know of.  Also, anything special that a House does could affect things.  Winrothol, have two or three bards...Tenneshi, actually have someone for selling construction projects...Tor, one or two additional guards (one a krathi) for helping to run the Academy...Borsail, um, I dunno as I don't really know them well enough to hypothesize at what they could have as a bonus...Oash could have two magicker guards (of any variety they wish) and only one mundy one.  All of these could replace the aide option, as a possibility.

[EvilRoeSlade]

How is Tor going to do anything interesting with only two Scorpions?  A Tor Scorpion isn't so much a guard as it is a real, bonified soldier.

Furthermore, I don't think managing -everything- would be a good idea.  Clans need a measure of freedom based on their needs at any given moment.  I only want to remove the redundancy of the three southern houses.  The guards of Borsail, Tor, and Oash pretty much have the same function.  They are in essence, the same clan.  That's why I think we should do away with the two, and keep the one that has the most potential to provide entertainment to its players.

[spawnloser]

If you notice, I suggested adding one or two to that for special stuff, depending on House.  Read the whole post, man.

[EvilRoeSlade]

If you notice, I suggested adding one or two to that for special stuff, depending on House.  Read the whole post, man.

I did read the whole post.  You can't go out into the desert if you only have two PCs, especially since most of the time they won't both be logged on.  Five or six is a more solid number.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

In all honesty, I don't wanna see no Houses. Two per city, with a ten PC cap per house, solves the problem...period. The Merchant Houses are a far different matter, and I think they should stay as they are.

Furthermore, I want to see leaders that lead, not a buncha knuckleheads who got hold of a buncha money to further support their tavern sitting and whoring. I want to see folks actully into the world, participating fully. I wanna see Immorrtals who actually work their Houses, setting up plots, etc.

I want to see independants make something of themselves. I want to see a lotta things. We all do.

In the end, the game is not broken, and while we may suggest a great many 'solutions', none of them would really make playing this game much more fun. None of them would actually improve the world. What we need, in the end, is more players. If we set a cap on the amount of PCs allowed in a House, we will force Houses to become more selective. If the Immortals are all active in their Houses, we will see more things for PCs to do. If we see more players, we will see more interactivity and more roles and more filled positions.

Ultimately, the game is currently successful, and as with anything successful, it has its drawbacks. Kudos to the staff for their current work on this game. If we all can bring one player to this game, the problem we are currently discussing disappears.

So, get to it.

[Bestatte]

I just think it's a phase and people should ride the wave as it moves back and forth instead of making arbitrary limitations.

Okay so right now there's a plethora of guards in this or that house, and everyone is happy and employed and there's no strife. Solution: Have the clan IMM impose a temporary moratorium on hiring for those clans which have enough to keep everyone sparring their happy little asses off 24/7 (since people log in at all hours of the day and all days of the week).

It would be grossly unfair to impose a permanent "only one or two per house" because with one, as Spawnloser says, they'll suck if they ever have a shot at combat. With two, they'd have to arrange to hire only those two people who are always online at the same time, AND they'd have to always be online at the same time as the noble who employs them. That leaves out a HUGE portion of the playerbase for incredibly OOC reasons.

Not only that.. but let's say we have those two guards, and they're around when the noble's around, and everything's going great - and the noble gets whacked, or retires. New noble shows up but his schedule isn't the same as his guards. What to do now? Fire the guards and hire 2 new ones? Have the guards stay, and have no one to guard and nothing to do and no assignments, while the noble has no one to guard him other than his NPC?

I really don't see any problem with how things are now, at least in the clan I'm in. A great group of people, not a lot, but not so few that we never get to see each other or have nothing to do all day long. There's also something to consider, and that's that not everyone wants to play an independent struggling whatever. Most people want someone to interact with regularly, it's why they play RPGs in the first place. Clans are the place they do that in Arm, for the most part.

I would much rather see nobles and clan leaders take more responsibility in WHO they hire. Turn people down! Release them from service if they don't work out during their recruitment period! I think some folks are putting too much emphasis on making sure newbies stick around by being nice to them and giving them every possible opportunity to succeed, when in some cases it's hurting the IC reputation of their house.

Not all newbies are bad. Most are actually pretty damned good, and some are far better than I was when I first showed up. But if you give a newb a chance, and he shows that he is just not getting it after 2 RL weeks of regular interaction, let the guy go. Just let him go and offer him IC advice on something else he might consider doing for a living. There's no shame in it, from either end of the spectrum.

[Ain't Nobody]

I'm not going to go back and quibble over details and arguments already presented, but I'll throw in some food for thought.

I don't think that getting rid of some of the PC guard forces is a bad idea at all, with a few stipulations. I think that people have made valid points about the limitations and frequent boredom of a guard's duties. So, instead of hiring on 20 people as guards that sit around and spar, a noble could hire on a more diverse contingent that serve a variety of purposes. Maybe the nobles hire them on more of a freelance or per-job basis, eventually bringing them on fulltime. So, instead of guards, the noble would have a variety of aides, retainers, and kiss asses who are paid coin for services rendered and, if the noble is feeling benevolent, have the ear of one of the city state's nobility. The IC reasoning for this could be that even the great noble houses have somewhat limited resources. The OOC method could be to only allow each noble to keep a certain amount of "full time" employees in their employ at one time.

One problem with this is that the traditional way to "get stuff done" for a noble is to have a powerful contingent of PC guards who can carry out the noble's wishes. The reason being that finding reliable, and effective, freelance help is a crapshoot at best, so the nobility have always pulled their (wo)manpower from inhouse. However, if "guards" as we know them were abolished for most houses, it would force freelance people to step in to fill that gap. This also has the added advantage of involving more of the population in intrigue as well as adding an additional element of risk to scheming since most power struggles would involve enlisting the aide of those outside one's house and not just sicking your superior PC guard contingent on someone else's.

When I ran nobles, I actually preferred to do without a guard force. I liked to have one or two excellent aides who were capable of making connections, organizing my affairs and carrying out my wishes. I always found the overseeing of a standing guard force to be tedious, and in the case of most of my nobles, unrealistic (they really weren't interested.)

Now, this requires a shift in the way that hiring is done and the way the playerbase looks at "employment." Gone would be the days of free food, water, rent and board. The change would have to occur and be documented staff side in order to make it work. Otherwise, one house might attempt it, and they'd quickly have no PCs in their service because everyone would be running to the house that still offers free food and board.

I can see this system working especially well in the North where there is already a documented patronage system that outlines this concept in theory, if not in practice. Anyway, it's an interesting idea, but it's something of a gamble in that it might upset the existing order and replace it with something that doesn't really function that well.

Them're mah thoughts,
Ain't Nobody

[Angela Christine]

I don't know about limiting houses, but I definately wouldn't limit militia.  When noble houses have missions outside the city they can usually "borrow" city militia as long as there is not a current crisis inside the city.  Militia act as back up for the other houses in the event of . . . an event.  If a crazed mage attacks the Salaar compound, you can bet the militia are going to be on speed dial (or whatever the "way" equivilent is).
Like most house guard jobs a militiaman can't run out of the city to go hunt scrabs whenever they want, but they do have a more interesting patrol area.  House guards are stuck with just a couple locations to guard/patrol; a compound, an estate, the shops, and then they are stuck back sleepwalking through a schedual or sitting in a tavern.  Militia can patrol the whole city, walking around the city takes longer and is more interesting than guarding a gate or a shop.  Theives and assisins hardly ever break into a compound, but there are crimes on the mean streets of the city every day.  Plus you get to hang out with templars, and watch them torture other people for a change.


AC

[crymerci]

So, let me make sure I have this clear.

People think that the game is less harsh because there are more clanned characters?

And, a year or more ago, we were hoping for a larger playerbase so we could fill up more of the houses.

So, does this mean that having more players has made the game less harsh?