Not to toot my own horn, but I'd like to point to Terran and the Moot's conflict with Aurvandil as an example of how you can have all the fancy-shmansy priest game and trademastering and politicking... and use them as components of a war.
OOCly, I can think of many ways the Moot could have made peace with Aurvandil (and probably a fairly reasonable peace). The problem is that I, the player, know where that leads. The Moot isn't going to have a civil war (especially with powerful neighbors next door). The Moot won't plausibly be able to crush/colonize the Lurias. The peace settlement with Kabrinskia was ridiculously friendly and it's difficult to conceive of motive for war.
Bashing Asylon could be amusing, but, again, seems like a dead end in any long-term thinking.
So I exerted all my IC efforts at war with Aurvandil: and a big, bloody, nasty, religio-politically significant one, where we can all play our seperate NounMaster games towards the common end of tossing Mendicant naked and bloody into the Strait of Candiels. And I've exerted my OOC efforts explaining to people how completely boring it will be for Terran and the Moot if we don't have a big war with at least semi-epic aims. Now, Hireshmont is no longer ruler, but he's still influential (and was ruler at a formative time in all this).
In sum– Fleugs, come play in Terran, or Barca, or D'hara. We don't have constant battle just due to seasons and travel times, but we do have fighting, we do have a sense of "playing for the team," and we do have players in power who think it's their OOC job to make sure fun things keep happening. I can't guarantee you're going to always have fun, but I can guarantee it's a place where folks are trying.
