More Detailed Family Ties

[Eirikr]

Title: More Detailed Family Ties

Summary: Add game-logged familial ties (or a way to define a family tree in game without having to keep separate notes or put it on the Wiki). Optionally, add a title for first-generation offspring of a Hero.

Details: Perhaps it's just me, but I often have trouble remembering familial ties between characters beyond their last names. Even my own! What about allowing (but not requiring) you to specify a relation (such as son, daughter, etc.) to an existing character when creating a new character? I feel like this would be public information already (especially among nobles); putting into the game makes it easier for everyone to keep the collective lore right.

Furthermore, it might be a cool idea to add titles for a Hero's children. For example, "Kuvio Eirikr, Son of Maduin". It seems only natural to me that someone as famous as a Hero would have his fame leak over to his children, even if they don't live up to it. It also gives other players a new "spoiled brat" line of roleplay to work with. I could easily see treating a character either better or worse (depending on his own actions) as a result of his Heroic parent.

Additionally, this adds a little more to the concept of a Hero being famous continent-wide. Deaths are fairly effective at this, but it's easy for that to just fade out.

Benefits:

• Helps sort out connections between characters in the same family.
• Gives Heroes a little more RP'd fame.
• Makes a more obvious avenue for RP or IC treatment.

Possible Exploits / Issues:

• None that have a real gameplay impact.
• Players may not find the relation option they're looking for. (Which is why the choice should be optional.)
• Adventurers would need to have this hidden while not (known to be) nobility.
• Potentially makes the system too rigid, discouraging creativity.

[egamma]

I like this, but can't see it justified with everything else else that needs to be developed.

I think there would be two fields for each character, where you would specify [character name] is the [son|daughter|grandson|granddaughter|father|mother|etc] of [list of player's characters].
The game would then automatically set the reverse.[/list]

[Vita`]

I don't know about everything in the feature request, but at minimum, we could probably add a drop-down for a new character being a son or daughter of either an existing character or one in the graveyard. Then, instead of family history reading as 'Began his career in Luria Nova.', it could read as 'Son of Kepler began his career in Luria Nova.' Then, at minimum, there'd be a son/daughter and parent reference for character in the family history. I don't know about using it elsewhere in BM though...

No guarantees on said idea being accepted, but I thought it'd be a simple compromise that could be done easily enough.

[Tom]

I just created a family tree system for MaF, and it isn't quite as easy as setting one field, because you have to watch out for illogical things like A->B->C->A circles.

[Eirikr]

I like this, but can't see it justified with everything else else that needs to be developed.

Oh, yeah, I agree. I just threw this up there because the idea popped into my head and I didn't want to forget. If it's up here, we can always return later.

I just created a family tree system for MaF, and it isn't quite as easy as setting one field, because you have to watch out for illogical things like A->B->C->A circles.

I don't think it has to be that complicated. Just have someone specify the immediate relation and let them be responsible for their own illogical circles. I wanted to leave it very simple and open-ended because age could cause the same problem. (One continuously wounded younger character can surpass an older, but never wounded character, right?) If you go into that level of detail, this would never be worth the effort.

I'm proposing a very bare-bones version. It's in essence no different from posting it on the Wiki yourself; both would be player-controlled. The difference is that one is easily represented and shown fairly easily in game and the other you have to hunt down (provided the player took the time to make it at all).

I also don't mean setting up a graphical or visual representation, just a quick selection box (or two, as egamma correctly points out) that then gets displayed somewhere relatively accessible. (My first thought was the family page just listed next to the character.)

[Vita`]

I just created a family tree system for MaF, and it isn't quite as easy as setting one field, because you have to watch out for illogical things like A->B->C->A circles.

Indeed; this amongst many other reasons makes the full feature request rather difficult. However, my compromise of marking a new character as a son/daughter of an existing or dead character would be relatively simple and avoid illogical relation circles.

More complex relations of cousins, uncles, etc. can be left to the wiki like everything is now while basic child/parent can be recorded in Family History, to the convenience of anyone checking someone's family page. If its only able to be done when creating a new character and its limited to only marking existing/dead characters as parents, there's no way someone can build an A->B->A circle since no one will be able to mark an existing character as the child of another.