Current Clans

[Boggis]

Taken from the Consolidation thread so as not to derail:

I'm somewhat worried about this "consolidation" idea, too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you want to scoop people up into the Noble Houses to sit and idle there. The big clans as they are are static. They are the antithesis of conflict. They are, IMO, stifling the game. Pouring more players into them seems a hideously bad idea to me. Why on earth would you want to get rid of the places where players can still decide the relationships between clans, such as in tribal lands?

It would seem from various posts over the past while that some people feel that the large clans are stifling the game. I can understand the viewpoint as there are probably plenty of times where a character has wanted to do something but orders from on high scotched this. I've read about the establishing of small clans which would operate further down the rungs of the social ladder but personally I think that while a nice idea this would be very difficult to implement and a lot of rich history would essentially be pushed to one side.

Perhaps another solution which would yield quicker results would be the Imms permitting the conflict and tension levels to rise a few notches between the various Houses? I know that there are hidden plots that occur between the Houses, my previous character was privy to a few, but I think that things could maybe be ratcheted up a little which would also drag more players into the RP.

Perhaps the Cold War would be a decent analogy - yes the Houses aren't in open warfare with each other but I think that they could try to undermine their opponents a bit more in a bid to gain position for themselves. Just the like the Cold War there would be casualties on both sides and numerous proxy fights like the Soviets / Chinese supplying the Vietnamese, the Americas supplying the Mujahadeen, etc. Certain casualties are to be expected and accepted in that kind of struggle but neither side would break out into open hostilities over it. This is the important point in my opinion. At the moment I feel that Houses are too touchy about even the slightest of incidents. Somebody says something derogatory about another House and suddenly it turns into an international incident with a United Nations peace-keeping force cranking up to prevent genocide. I'm not saying that Houses should turn a blind eye to everything but some things just wouldn't be worth getting their knickers in a twist over. A snide comment? Who cares. A couple of recruits having a barney over which House is better? Doesn't matter really. Spying? Par for the course - everybody is doing it. Assassination? It happens and will merit a response of course comensurate with the status of the person bumped off.

I think this is something that Imms and players can work on together. If there is some low-level plan to ruffle an opponent's feathers a little then let it happen. If it succeeds / fails the the other House shouldn't over-react to what is essentially a minor incident - throw some niggle back at them, hire some people to slander the other House, engage in some skullduggery itself, etc. This would take care of the "Lets not do that as we don't want to cause some trouble" excuse and would allow Houses to keep their hires busy as well as OOCly entertained. Let the small things happen, they should be happening all the time between the Houses as they jockey for position. Us players would have to keep the Imms well-informed of everything thats going on at the same time so that the level of conflict can be controlled and maintained at one that is enjoyable without being unrealistic. Players would have to play within their station as the Houses are obviously not going to permit things to escalate into all-out trench warfare but a bit more latitude in what is acceptable before this happens might be beneficial.

Maybe this could increase the conflict, make the Houses more dynamic and keep House players entertained while keeping the rich history that we've built up over the years in the foreground and not in the background? Thoughts?

[spawnloser]

My personal opinion?  If you want to see more conflict amongst the major clans, make it.  It is there, if you look for it.

[My 2 sids]

My personal opinion? If you want to see more conflict amongst the major clans, make it. It is there, if you look for it.

I think that's part of the problem people are saying though... one has to hunt for this conflict so much, it can hardly be seen.  Couple that with the fact that many times people are not allowed to "create their own conflect" because every little thing becomes a huge house issue.  Maybe I want to create tention between myself and another house's lowly servent.  Maybe we growl when we pass each other on the street or maybe we even take advantage of the new fight code in the bars... will this sort of tention be allowed?  Will it be able to build?  Of corse not!  Even in a house of a hundread npc/vnpc servants/family EVERYONE in both houses will take notice of our little tention building activites and BOTH sides will quickly take away the tention or build it into one of those huge "hidden" affairs in which point we are back to square one.

[Boggis]

My personal opinion?  If you want to see more conflict amongst the major clans, make it.  It is there, if you look for it.

I've been in on this type of deeper conflict plenty of times but my point was that oftentimes a player is not permitted to do something as the higher ups in the clan don't want to stir things up because Houses over-react to things currently. What happens then is that players have to strive to become part of the higher-echelon, over-arching plotlines which while enjoyable too are ultimately completely out of their control and they're only likely to see a portion of anyway.

What would be more fun would be smaller, short-term plots which would be conducted by the players against the House's opponents e.g. House Oash gets annoyed with the Atrium and covertly sends some employees to burn the Silver Ginka to the ground putting it out of action for say RL week until its repaired again. Chances are right now that if House Oash was annoyed with the Atrium and you suggested burning the Silver Ginka down to teach them a lesson it would be met with a "Hmm, lets not do something like that right now. We'll deal with it at a higher level. Now, see what rumours you can pick up about them in the meantime and report back to me." Not quite as much as fun in my opinion.

You say make conflict? So do I and others too. And it would be done but I think there has to be a change what the players are permitted to do by the higher ups in the House. Its a difficult balance as such actions have to be realistic too but it can be achieved by players and Imms working together and would make the world feel more dynamic.

[Anonymous]

Back when I was playing my longest lived noble, Borsail, Oash, Tor and Fale were all very active.  There was a lot going on, a lot of political intrigue.  Then Fale closed.  Then Winrothol and Tenneshi opened in the north.  And I think all of that has had a very negative effect on the status of political intrigue on Arm.

Having two noble houses in one region pretty much means that there are no surprises.  Either the active nobles from each house hate each other and let it be known, hate each other but keep it secret, or are hunky dory.  But with more noble houses thrown into the mix in a single location things become exponentially more complex.

When I was playing my longest lived noble, and there were four active noble houses all in the same city, the intrigue was enormous.  You never knew which house's nobles were spying on you, which had ill will towards you and, most importantly, which noble house's were trying to manipulate you against another.

With the addition of two noble clans located in an entirely different region, the effect has been a thinning of noble roles in any one city and, IMHO, a pretty severe reduction in house vs. house activity.  Which results in less for a given house noble PC to do, which results in the high turnover rate of nobles we are seeing.  Merchant houses have become the main focus of intrigue, whether it's merchant houses vs. noble houses, merchant houses vs. merchant nouses or merchant houses vs. other clans/groups.

Furthermore, back when I was actively playing nobles, it was nobles, not merchants, who were the PCs that had the most longevity and provided a stable RP environment.  Oash had Agrestes and another I just plain can't remember, Tor had Iakovitzes, Borsail had a couple, and Fale had Therian, Kojiro and Kojiro's commoner wife whose name, sadly, slips my mind.

These weren't PCs who had only been playing for a month or two.  But were a continual presence in the game.  I'm not doing a 'things were better back in the day' like an old fart here, seriously, nobles and Templars just don't seem anywhere as prevalent or as long-lived now, and I honestly think it's because of how noble roles are spread across more clans and two cities intead of consolidated into a single city.

And that makes me a sad panda.

In the end, I don't care where it's done, but I'd be forever overjoyed if one city's nobility was closed for play until there was nearly twice the active playerbase we have today.

[Anonymous]

My personal opinion?  If you want to see more conflict amongst the major clans, make it.  It is there, if you look for it.

While as a rule that's not a bad approach to take, that's an overly simplistic response to an issue which boils down to Clan X having enough of a presence and active pcs to make conflict with Clan Y an impactful plot.

When I first started playing, which was only about 3 1/2 years ago, the login high was around 30 PCs.  Yet getting a job was HARDER[/i] and my PC would often get turned down.  It wasn't harder because recruiters were hard to find, but because there were just less clans hiring, meaning jobs were in shorter supply.

The increase in hiring clans has not been proportionate with the increase in the playerbase, causing there to be more positions than recruitable PCs.  The end result is that most clans are thin on PC numbers and thin distribution of PCs across many clans does not lead to intense and meaningful conflict roleplay.

[sarahjc]

My personal opinion?  If you want to see more conflict amongst the major clans, make it.  It is there, if you look for it.

I've been in on this type of deeper conflict plenty of times but my point was that oftentimes a player is not permitted to do something as the higher ups in the clan don't want to stir things up because Houses over-react to things currently. What happens then is that players have to strive to become part of the higher-echelon, over-arching plotlines which while enjoyable too are ultimately completely out of their control and they're only likely to see a portion of anyway.

I say bite the bullet, and if you feel you really have something and something  that could cause great conflict, good drama and some fun RP. CC the imms and hope you don't loose your Karma..

I've seen some wrench tossing good ones every now and then. Well though out, and a lot of fun.. but you can always tell that they weren't in the master plan.

Not to say that we should all go "knocking off" The higher echelons of all major houses.. But if you feel you have the means, and more importantly the -well defined- motive.. Do what you like and cause conflict.

[Anonymous]

My perspective is that a lot of the times the sort of blocking of conflict that Boggis has referred to, on the Immortal's part, has been because of the actions of players who don't have an understanding of their PC's standing in their house.

On numerous occasions I've seen PCs who were only at a very, very low ranking within their house act as though they spoke for their house.  While Lord Joey Junior Noble might be an order of magnitude more powerful, socially speaking, than a given commoner, they are not in a position to terminate contracts, alliances or change house policy.  And that's when the staff steps in.

Should a truce negotiated in secret over months of intense roleplay by previous players in two given clans be negated because a noble PC new to the game decides that he or she was insulted?

No.  That's why higher ranking NPCs come in and lay the smack down.

[Tamarin]

Right on the money, CRW.  In fact, I would even like to see more care given to keeping these underhanded deals going, despite the death/retiring of various PCs who happened to be driving said plots.  I guess that comes back to the whole issue of letting your IMMs know what the fuck you're doing, because if you don't, there will be no one to pass the torch on to the next noble of your house.  Or if you're really clever, you can have a few partners in crime as backup in case you get wacked or trampled by an argosy.

[Quirk]

I believe, CRW, that the impact PCs are allowed to make on Houses has decreased over the last couple of years. I would postulate that this has had a larger effect on intrigue than the PCs in the Houses being spread more thinly, particularly as I would not say that the PCs are spread much more thinly than before. Recruiting standards have fallen, and I believe most Houses are at least as well-supplied with members as the typical House was two years ago, although any suggestion of elitism about House guards that there was back then seems to have vanished.

It's not merely an issue of new nobles coming in and threatening to undo the work of longstanding ones; I very rarely see significant developments from any noble that their House is willing to stand behind.

Having played within the last few months a fairly well-connected spying role, I would suggest that what passes for "intrigue" among most Houses in one major area at least is in a pretty bad state. Their concerns are generally petty, rarely rising above avenging some mild insult or punishing a House member who fraternises with a member from a House that the docs state they feel some enmity towards. While spying turns up the odd planned assassination here or there and manages to be quite interesting if you have good contacts, the Houses themselves remain depressingly still with little sign of movement toward long-term goals or even the balance of power being disturbed in any way. Such dynamic movement as there is is usually the result of small groups of players acting outside House constraints; the most active any Houses get is usually when thwarting such comparatively tiny groups and wiping them out.

I imagine, given the shift in perspective on Houses over the last while, that the immortals would be none-too-keen on placing the large Houses in the perilous position of having PCs decide their movements. This is why I've been preaching the small-to-medium-sized clan gospel, as it were. Clans of the size of the Byn or Atrium or elven tribes strike me as about perfect, and here's why:

* The resources of such clans are not for PC purposes nearly limitless. They need to make money, they need to be careful spending their sid.
* A sufficiently capable PC could be appointed as leader and given sole direction over such a clan without fear that a misstep on their behalf would precipitate a landscape-changing world war. If no such capable PC exists, it is likely that there will still be roles subordinate to the main decision-maker that will enable PCs to affect their clan's prospects for good or ill under some degree of imm supervision.
* The balance of power between clans can be put back into PC hands rather than left to predefined documentation.
* There is scant room in a small clan for a member who doesn't pull their weight. You don't hire guards with your limited resources merely to be showy, or gather a heap of aides with ill-defined responsibilities.
* The clans are not so small that wiping them out without some concerted enemy action is easy, nor so large that they remain static. While some VNPCs exist in high places, the clan may potentially be revivable, so the work put into it is not necessarily lost if PCs reap the consequences of their actions.

Some token Merchant House and Noble presence might be worth having still, but having the majority of PCs stuck in the sadly static Houses is not something that bodes well for the game. Additionally, it would bring a new lease of life to elves and half-elves, who're not known for their movements in high society and are currently suffering badly from the emphasis on Noble House RP. What clans do we currently have who would potentially deal with a city elven tribe, the Byn and Kurac apart? Lower the society that PCs move in, and elves become relevant again.

Quirk

[Tamarin]

In all honesty, I think the houses need more open conflict.  They are continually pussyfooting around, trying to be suave and secretive.  We don't need a 007 in each house who goes around using a montblanc pen to spray blood onto the dashboard of a ford bronco... we need a bunch of XXX's (vin diesel) going around with cans of flash powder and blowing shit up!!!

[JollyGreenGiant]

I second spawnloser's assertion.  I'd like to add that most people who join the larger organizations seem to have one of two reactions.  The first is to wait around for a plot to pick you up and carry you off.  Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, but this generates a lot of the "nothing ever happens" type complaints.  The second is to try to go generate instant action.  This can be quite successful in the short term as well, but often generates no lasting plotlines or conflict, and just as frequently results in severely negative consequences for your character.

If I may offer a suggestion based on my own experiences, there is a better solution to getting involved with all that stuff you hear about going on that you can never seem to find.  Step one is to figure out who the current movers and shakers are.  The special app roles tend to be good places to start: templars, nobility and merchants.  Another good place to look are the officers, especially high-ranking officers.  Step two is to observe your pick of people for a while.  If you're a guard, for example, you've got an automatic reason to be around your charges or your officers.  Look at who they talk to, where they go, who they're assigning to various tasks.  Even if you think the person you've decided to hang around isn't involved in anything interesting, move on to step three instead of going back to step one.

Step three is where you work on getting yourself involved.  How you do so depends on what organization you work for, who you are, and who you're trying to get involved with.  You might simply ask whoever it is that you've been observing to get involved in what they're doing, especially if you happen to know something about what they're doing.  You might start keeping an eye on the activities of whoever it is that meets with the person you've been observing, then bring information to your immediate superior and work up the chain of command.  Or, at this point, you might know enough to strike out on your own and create plots of your own that mesh with other things currently going on.

This is just a suggestion, of course.  How you go about things is up to you, and this way of doing things may not fit your character or your playing style.  If you're one of those people that can't find any plots happening, and everytime someone on the GDB says, "Stuff is going on that you don't know about." you think to yourself, "Yeah, right, then how come I never see it?" - this suggestion is for you.  I can't promise this will work, but not only has it been successful for me in the past, but it's how I've observed many of the people who are involved with plots got started with them in the first place.

[creeper386]

I didn't read much of the posts after but My 2 Sids is pretty correct.

It's not the staff that sqaushes conflict within clans. It's almost always the noble population. I've yet to see a really poor noble played but still too often they tend to get into business that really doesn't have anything to do with them.

It's not just clan to clan conflict that is stiffled because every little thing is a clan conflict(Heck, almost always just insulting a SINGLE clanned character is taking as insulting the whole clan which is fairly idiotic) it's any interaction with clanned people tends to be stiffled.

I know it may be boring playing nobles sometimes, but they really shouldn't always be involved in everything, and if they are they shouldn't always be, "You said my private was a dick!?!? I'll have you killed!" Which is a common reaction. Just another pet peeve of mine about noble characters up there with hapharzardous recruitment.

I'm starting to think that making things on a lower scale wouldn't be a bad idea. But don't take out or lessen existing class. Lower the scale on it. Heck, totalling chopping up current nobles would be a great idea. PC nobles rarely are high ranking, and aren't really to special unless they prove themselves. Show that. Sure they are better then most of the PC population of commoners but that doesn't mean they should be giving completely free reign like it ussually looks like now. Make them poorer. Give them less weight behind them. Pound into their head that even though they are running a part of their house they shouldn't involve themselves in every part of their underlings lives. Every time a noble gets involved in a minor quarrel I think they also watch over these peoples social and sex life just as much, "No no! You complete idiot!! You're doing that TOTALLY wrong and that girl is just TOO ugly and dirty for you anyways! Better kill her it's an insult to the house!"

Creeper

[Quirk]

In all honesty, I think the houses need more open conflict.  They are continually pussyfooting around, trying to be suave and secretive.  We don't need a 007 in each house who goes around using a montblanc pen to spray blood onto the dashboard of a ford bronco... we need a bunch of XXX's (vin diesel) going around with cans of flash powder and blowing shit up!!!

I would agree entirely that the game needs more open conflict, but open conflict between the huge Houses would lead to a fairly stressful imm workload, I suspect. The Houses are powerful, and rapid changes in the balance between them would affect their respective cities majorly. There's perhaps a little too much at stake, and the tendency has been to allot players less say in what their House does rather than more; a tendency which, given the circumstances, I entirely approve of from an RP perspective although I think it hurts playability.

A rowdy dispute between, say, the Byn and another up-and-coming mercenary organisation of a slightly smaller size would be the perfect vehicle for that kind of conflict, though. Bribes and backhanders slipped to templars to look the other way as discreet yet damaging raids are carried out on each other's compounds, massive mercenary brawls in the Gaj and face-offs in quiet streets would be fair game while still leaving room for subtler conflicts as the two compete for the contracts available.

Quirk

[Tamarin]

I realise that this would involve huge amounts of IMM intervention, and in fact I once started a plot that would have lead to a great deal of open conflict between two houses, but it was promptly squashed by the imms.

This point has been made before, but if the houses were more PC driven than IMM driven, this wouldn't be a problem.  As it is, the really hardcore players, I think, tend to shy away from such roles because they have little to no freedom in the plots they wish to create.  If that were not the case, I think more players would be inclined to special app, and really get some shit flying through the streets.

[Vox]

The increase in hiring clans has not been proportionate with the increase in the playerbase, causing there to be more positions than recruitable PCs.  The end result is that most clans are thin on PC numbers and thin distribution of PCs across many clans does not lead to intense and meaningful conflict roleplay.

THIS is the essence of why I started the Consolidation thread.    I agree wholeheartedly with Boggis and CRW on this matter.

'nuff said.