The smaller picture...

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

With the advent of the new time system, and in general, with everything going in the direction it is going in, I think the time has come to rehash Rindan's plot on smaller, looser, more player-governed commoner Houses. What are the thoughts floating about in the recesses of your minds?

Reading over some of the problems that players preceive in the Byn and such, I think to myself, "How cool would it be to have a couple of small mercenary clans, with Tlaloc in charge of them, floating around the world? Real mercenary clans, to serve in the petty wars between small Commoner Houses? Roving, used only to fill space, and even, at times, in combat amongst themselves! How cool is that?"

You may note, I still am firmly in support of the idea.

PS: For those who need a reminder - Rindan's original post.

[Armaddict]

I've -always- thought we needed more mercenary groups.  Even more independents.

But I've only seen a couple players that will actually hire independents as mercenaries,  which blows.  I don't picture the byn as the perfect soldier, especially for a noble's sort of uses.

That obscure noble who doesn't leave the estate much, but now has a formal affair in the city to attend?  Hire that one mercenary you saw at so-and-so's party, guarding lady such and such.  He looked able, wasn't downright gross to look at, and seemed to have some knowledge of etiquette.

Yeah.  I'm anti-corporation, even in arm.  *snicker*

[UnderSeven]

Eww, I don't see a problem here, if players want to see small comoner clans and commoner houses, then make them yourself?  You don't need ANY imm support to do that and get started.  I've done it before myself, it was fun.

[jmordetsky]

I'd love to see it happen. I just don't see it happening. Theres too much of OC job market for players in the existing merchant and noble houses.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Eww, I don't see a problem here, if players want to see small comoner clans and commoner houses, then make them yourself?  You don't need ANY imm support to do that and get started.  I've done it before myself, it was fun.

Agreed. The problem is that if this happens, then those large Houses will lose players. That's a concern - under-populated clans. IMM support is important in that things which should happen can happen. It is just that in a smaller clan, player choices make more of a difference. Not in the Grand scheme of things, but in your own little world, it does.

[jmordetsky]

Close down 1 merchant house and 2 noble houses in each city.

muhahahahaha. :twisted:

[UnderSeven]

It takes the right players to make the smaller scheme things happen, but on the same note, I'm apprehensive to see bigger houses lose too much steam.  The last thing I woud want is just two merchant houses, then you get two sided conflicts and those are rather dull IMO.  I like the myriad of facets we see in game currently and personally like to see it stay that way.

In addition I think we need to keep in mind the way the economy works in game is still in a lot of ways virtual.  Big merchant houses income are clearly not comming all in by the players work alone, nor is it all spent by them.  Because of this, if a small indepentant run commoner house were to work hard, it could 'appear' like they were more successful than a big merchant house, where as in actuality I don't think that could really be the case.

Just my thoughts on this.

[jhunter]

I'm all for it, still to this day the most fun I've ever had playing was with a pc run clan.

The IMM run clans are fun, don't get me wrong, but there's just something about the fact that more seems to happen in a player run clan...people are more apt to make things happen when they don't have to get permission from an IMM to do them first.

[spawnloser]

Close down 1 merchant house and 2 noble houses in each city.

muhahahahaha. :twisted:

So...there are only two noble houses up north.  If there was only one, the nobles of the surviving noble house wouldn't have much intrigue going on, would they?

[Thanos]

Having run a small mercenary group, I thought I might post a few of my own ideas on it. It is possible with no immortal support, and it is very rewarding. It is also, very difficult.

1.5-2 years ago I put together a group small enough to maintain complete dominion over, yet large enough to be hired on by several major groups, and become envolved in world shaping plots inbetween scheming up our own.

The difficulties.
One: Coins. You need to be able to put together a fairly sizable base of coinage to start your operation. Five-ten thousand is a good start. With that you can hire people, equip them, feed them, and even pay them. (The trick here is to realize most people will die before you ever have to pay them. So dont worry about salaries too much.)

Two: Politics. Not everyone is going to be happy about you pulling recruits away from their organization. And if you are small, and they are big, you may very soon find yourself needing to move bases. Because of this I recommed basis of operation outside the normal flow to get your fledgling operation off the ground. Red Storm, Cenyr, TenSarak all come to mind as excellent places one could run a fledgling operation out of.

Three: Patience. People die. Dont take it personaly when that giant you just spent 2k on to outfit runs out and get splattered by a mek. Thats the nature of things. Hire everyone, and one in ten will turn into someone who will help you run things.

Four: Death. Without you, your group will die. So if you take a two week break, dont be surprised when you come back to nothing. Rebuild and move on.

Two sid.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Two: Politics. Not everyone is going to be happy about you pulling recruits away from their organization. And if you are small, and they are big, you may very soon find yourself needing to move bases.

And herein lies the major problem with having the Larger Houses open today. They take interest in what they shouldn't. There are some 100k folks in Allanak. Do you really think that the Byn is going to even notice your ten man mercenary unit?

The Immortals can still bring the Larger Houses into the fray when they have to, but for the most part, they would not occupy themselves with the petty small-man crews. Tlaloc, for instance, would pay attention to the various PC run mercenary clans, while deciding whether the Byn would even be interested in them.

[Thanos]

The problem with attempting to change things is this. There are people who have done what your talking about, and done it well. Because of this it is looked on as a possability in the game in its current configuration. It is not however easy.

In order to see this happen on the scale you are talking about, it would need to be far more easy. However, the number of players in the game able to hold an organization together without a preset structure as it exists with the current powerhouses, are very small.

In truth, how many people would want to lead such organizations? How many people think they have the time to devote? Because an independant organization is much more time intensive to run.

This is a good idea in principle, im just not sure it works in armageddon.

Again, only a lousy two sids.

[John]

Thanos brings in a lot of good points. But I also agree small clans don't need to be Imm-sponsored and (arguably) shouldn't be. Yup, it's hard. But stuff SHOULD be hard in a harsh world. Small "clans" shouldn't survive a long time, they should be dynamic, rising and falling over time.

However with the OOC problems, I'd suggest going to other muds, and seeing how they do it. Because a lot of muds do have player-created clans. See what makes it easier/harder for them.

[Quirk]

The initial suggestion of Rindan's was not that all clans become solely player-run, but that the clans run by immortals that were open to PCs were low or middle class operations. Currently, there are several problems with the great forces of the world being the open clans.

1) House policy usually cannot be greatly affected by PCs.

Suppose you're a Lord of House Jal. A House Voryek Family member is repeatedly disrespectful and rude to you, and encourages her employees to show similar contempt. You know from the Jal documentation that House Jal has got good relations with House Voryek.

There's apparently an opportunity for conflict here. You can either go to your superiors, or take action directly. Let's say you do the former - you want to reduce the House's trade with House Voryek as a subtle punitive measure, and you discuss this with your superiors in House Jal. They tell you that there's no quarrel with House Voryek, just this particular insolent merchant. You then ask what you can do instead. The likely answer is that your superiors will have a word with your opposite's superiors in House Voryek and they'll be disciplined internally. You might get away with a little light character assassination of your own, but it should never be shown too openly that the Houses are not in accord - because really, the two Houses get on fine, whatever the PCs are doing.

Alternatively, you can just take direct action and be punished for it later, as I suspect happens more commonly.

The apparent conflict is therefore swallowed up by the dead weight of the VNPC majority of the House. You will not see out and out war between Houses because the PCs in them do not have the authority to declare it.

2) Conflict must be sought in unrealistic places.

It is extremely unlikely that House Voryek would care about another woodcrafting stall being open somewhere in Allanak's Bazaar unless the operation behind it were of a serious enough size to threaten their monopoly. However, the House Voryek PCs can't indulge in open conflict against other Houses beyond a little light spy work, so to get themselves a slice of that juicy conflict RP they pick on the smalltime independent PC who's finally made enough sid to open his own stall. It's an unequal battle, and the potential player-run clan dies stillborn.

3) Player-run clans can almost never rise to be able to compete with an imm-run clan.

The Houses are too big to compete with. Where in a small-clan low-class environment a player-run clan might grow large enough to eventually become an "official" clan in its own right, the chances of a player-run clan displacing one of the great Merchant Houses are scant.

4) Houses have huge virtual incomes and can never be brought to the level of struggling for survival by PCs alone.

Some level of virtual income is fair enough. However, no matter how badly PCs may mismanage their clans, the House will never run low on sid, will never have to do things out of desperation.

5) A comfortable life is all too easy.

Recruiters swarm round collecting every PC they can find to fill the Houses, because their resources are unlimited and they don't need to worry about those PCs bringing in value for money. Conflicts likely to go against the House are rare, so many of those PCs live to ripe old ages in comfort.

6) The imm-run clans will always have a large proportion of the players.

It isn't easy to survive as an independent, and the majority of the few player-run clans can't offer the certainty of food and water and a decent wage, so players flock to the imm-run ones for simple survival reasons. I've often seen players who mention having had many short-lived characters told to join a clan. This tends to preserve the status quo.

Armageddon feels to me to be becoming increasingly static in the sense that PCs on the whole do not have a large amount of control over the organisations they are part of. Considering what those organisations are, this seems to be a good thing from a realism viewpoint. It's an improvement from an RP perspective. It is not an improvement from a playability perspective. Conflicts are increasingly ephemeral and muted, mere squabbles between groups too dignified to sully their fingers with real violence or one-sided massacres of small groups of PCs without the vital VNPC backing.

Quirk

[spawnloser]

Quirk, all I will say in response to your post is that you might be surprised at how much the PC leaders of an IMM-run clan can have in the end.  I am in a leadership position in a clan.  I have seen PCs make some pretty sweeping changes to House policies and opinions on some things...and have myself as well.

[jhunter]

I agree, as someone had said, that the small independant clans shouldn't even be of concern to the larger imm run clans...unless they do something to merit such notice they shouldn't even be considered any sort of threat whatsoever.

Odd though, as some players in those imm run clans have had their characters take notice of those smaller clans and take steps to crush them out of existence in the past.

[Rindan]

Thanos brings up why I don't think that you can have a game truly built around conflict on a smaller scale without imms being the glue to hold things together.  If the Byn was suddenly made player only, I can promise you that it would fail within two years, and the size, virtual or real, has nothing to do with it.  Independent clans are held together through strong leaders.  The reason for a lack of smaller scaled clans is not that people abhor the idea, just that it is too damned hard to make them and keep them alive.  

I am not lacking in knowledge of the world or leadership experience, but could not keep a small independent clan alive.  Keeping a clan alive requires a massive time investment into this game only a few people can make.  It further requires a massive commitment that even fewer people can make.  Think of all of those times you were in a clan and your sergeant went missing.  Most people stick around and stay until a new sergeant shows up.  In an independent setting this doesn't happen.  If the leader vanishes, then it means another leader has to take his place.  Leaders able to hold together clans are not a dime a dozen.  Further, such leaders are sought after commodities.  I would be thoroughly not surprised to learn that the imms keep careful track of these few uber leaders and struggle how best to make sure they are distributed throughout the game.  

Strong leaders are what really drive the game forward in interesting ways.  The imms just sort of hold the reigns when one of these leaders is unavailable.  Due to the sacristy of such leaders, that is a lot of reign holding at times.   You can just feel the difference between a clan with a strong leader and a clan that is on autopilot until one shows up.  The difference is night and day.  In an independent clan, the time between when the strong leader leaves and when the new one arrives is almost always death.  In an imm run clan, it is just a period where the clan is stagnant and boring.  This is the biggest reason why you don't see many clans that rose from being independents.  If they don't do it in the life of a single leader, the clan falls.

The biggest and best reason to have smaller imm run clans is because it means that you can have all the excellent and more accessible conflict of smaller scaled organization, but still have the stability of knowing that if a leader dies the clan is not over.  The imm run mercenary clans the Blood Gortoks and Shinny Scrabs can survive if their leader dies.  The imms can shore up the hierarchy and keep things running smoothly.  You can have small clans that are continuos.  It isn't the fact that House Kurac is virtually big that keeps it around, it is the fact that it always has leadership and always has an imm to keep it from fragmenting each time a leader dies.

[John]

I agree, as someone had said, that the small independant clans shouldn't even be of concern to the larger imm run clans...

That also means they shouldn't sell stuff or be hired by the larger Imm clans. Yet they are.

[Anonymous]

I'm talking about a concern for them...as in competition...not utilitizing them in some way.

[jhunter(notlogged)]

Oops...dammit...that last one was me.

[John]

I'm talking about a concern for them...as in competition..

The second anyone uses a player run clan, they become competition. If it's another small, player run clan then the big clan probably wouldn't care. However if it's an important, Immortal run clan, the other clan will care.

For example, if Lord Borsail decides to use Mercenary Clan Blah. The T'zai Byn has just lost some income. Therefore they would suddenly care about Mercenary Clan Blah. But what about all the other virtual mercenary clans that are used? They're probably mainly used by other small virtual clans.

[Carida]

(Note: All these examples are if the houses were closed or gone or whatever.)

What I'm curious about, is why all of a sudden, everyone wants to get rid of the Houses. From all that I've read about the houses and such, they've always been, and are a force to be reconded (sp) with. (correct me if I'm wrong) Also.. I see that people want conflict on a smaller scale? And more player run clans... that are.. independent right? Well.. I have to go with the fact that.. Independent run clans with no IMM help will fall apart if the leader is gone. Yes, it takes alot of time and effort, not many people have to run. I mean.. we play for fun. Not work. And running an independent clan WELL takes work. I mean.. this sounds good now. We'll be more involved in the little stuff that's going on! Yay! Actually no you won't.  Whether its a small clan or a big one, alot of the conflict in most clans usually goes on higher up. Not among the lower rungs of the clan. Its always been that way. In every game I've played where you were in a guild, clan, whatever. Alot of the interesting stuff happened with those who ran stuff. And if you worked your way into their good graces, then there you go. you got into the conflict.

What I'm wondering also is.. why don't people make their own conflict? I mean.. there have been plenty of really good examples of how to make your character's life more interesting. If you find it boring that is. (i'm too lazy to find a link of the post I'm thinking of) Its like everyone thinks that making smaller clans will make sure everyone is now involved in some kind of massively interesting plot. That's not going to happen. And over time.. those clans will probably grow.. (because an organization that doesn't grow, dies) And will wind up being as big as the current houses and then people will still complain that they aren't involved in the plots?

MAKE YOUR OWN PLOT I SAY!

Make your character's life interesting! I mean.. this is what this game is about right? Using your imagination! Work with each other and makes stuff crazy, or whatever it is your looking for.

Another issue I see people complaining about is that the clans make it too easy, with the food, water and shelter, making everything nice and easy. Well.. things are easier.. but not easy. You only get food at one point.. and other wise you got to go out and get your own(hunters). Or buy it.. or whatever. At least this is my experience.


(these are independants without the houses)
Now lets talk about these independents. If you have to go out (which is what alot of people are proposing) and get your own food and water.. and how will you get money? Dig for salt? Kill critters? Sell things you make or whatever. Yes.. this will be hard.. it will be a struggle. And that's what everyone wants right? A struggle so things are harsher. Well then.. let's say you got yourself your little clan. They go out together every day..IC day of course.. (they will have to, to feed their numbers) so they can dig for salt, or get things so they can craft, or whatever, so they can get money.. also go out and kill things for food. What if you all get wiped right on out by one big critter that catches you all? What then? If its run by an IMM they will hold the reigns until someone else comes along.. but wouldn't it just be the same as the big houses?

I mean to be honest here.. I don't see what the big thing would be if you got smaller clans. They will grow.. that's just a fact of an organization. And how small do you really want it? 5 or 6 people? 10 maybe? And with the constant danger.. you'd all be dropping like flies all the time... I just don't see the point.

I mean.. I see the houses as a sort of thing like.. they keep people alive long enough so that you have others to play with. Cause if there's noone else to play with.. gets kinda boring doesn't it? I mean.. if you don't want to play with anyone at all.. solo-rp is an option.. but then you got to think.. why play an interactive mud if you don't want to play with anyone else at all?

I don't know.. these were thoughts flowing through my mind as I was reading people's posts.

You want an independent clan? Go for it.. I don't see an issue for that.. but why mess with the houses? If your houses are better.. people will come.. people go where the fun is. (someone also said that, can't remember where)

Well.. just my random thoughts bouncing around my head.
I'm kind of tired.. so if I made no sense at all.. let me know..

[Angela Christine]

Special order items would be harder to get too.  You think there is a long wait for those gilded wrist-razors now?  Just wait until a small band of independants has to collect all the materials and figure out how to assemble them.  


AC

[wizturbo]

PC's can greatly affect the immortal-run world.  Higher ranking clan members certainly have that power, and lower ranking ones do too if they're clever.

[Quirk]

Carida, I suggest you read the thread up to now so you understand what the conversation's about. The idea is that instead of having mighty Houses run by the imms that have too much VNPC momentum to be altered much by the players, the imm-run clans should be smaller virtually and less important, with more room for their player leaders to have an impact on their well-being.

No, the big Houses should not be buying most of their goods from independents although individual members of those Houses may choose to do so. It would be diplomatically foolish, and generally such decisions are out of the purview of PC imms. No House will want to have its needs supplied by a patchwork group of independents, and no one independent will have the resources to outfit the thousands of guards and servants of an entire House. This is a silly situation. An individual noble buying some independent's clothing or hiring a couple of mercenaries isn't a threat. A noble trying to switch their main supplier for House clothing to an independent would turn that independent into a threat swiftly, although it would be readily apparent to all concerned what a daft decision it was.

PCs generally do not greatly affect the world. Very few of them have the power to change even one iota of House policy. This does not mean that they do not do so sometimes in game, but generally if they're caught trying to arrogate more power to themselves than they have they are punished, sometimes brutally. Sometimes the imm won't catch on what the PC noble is up to and the PC gets away with making some decision that was well and truly out of their league long enough that it has to be handled as a fait accompli, but that doesn't mean the noble actually had the authority to do what they did.

Quirk