Phoenix Talk, with Jenred Kindon-Bedwyr or Matthew, as you choose

[Indirik]

Oooh... I really want a shot at GA so bad....  >:(

[Gloria]

Wait. Tammo has an adventurer in the family, right?  Are you sure the one tortured was Tammo and not Silan?   It was unfortunately so long ago that I don't have a torture report or anything stored in my actual human memory.  All I remember is that when Ortisia was accused of torturing an Arcaean noble, I said "no noble was tortured" because the one tortured had been a commonner and shouldn't matter.  Now I'm confused, lol. Am I the one with the evil character? (I swear one of these days I'll go schizoid)

[Corwyn]

But Xarnelf's latest trip to Enlod is going to make things very interesting

Yeah, that caught me by surprise.  I asked some fellow Arcachon nobles if anyone had any idea, and of course no one replied.  Can't wait to find out!   :D

[Igelfeld]

We all know about the personality of Arcaea as a realm, and one of the things that was interesting about Arcachnon was its unique style.

So do you think that this the realms under your rule will have the ability to develop unique characters? or will the central guild influence everyone to be a lot like Arcaea is now?

It would be interesting if the empire consisted of a variety of styles... Along those lines, have you considered directly offering Arcachon a position within the empire if they would accept a new ruling council?

[Gloria]

I don't think it will work.  All puppeteering plans fall apart because at some poing the puppet resents its strings being pulled. Also, because I do not think it is very enjoyable to people in other realms to play along.  So, the empire will fall because it's not cool nor fun.

[Indirik]

I talked to Matt about some of this via IRC, but here's some of my thoughts organized here for the forum readers.

1. We're going to have (the guild has been built, just need to finish the fighting so everyone has time to join) an empire-wide guild.  Now, Arcaea currently has discussions in three main ways: The whole realm, the Phoenix Court (where most everything gets discussed), and the Military Conclave.  The guild is going to simulate that with the all guild, full members, and elder members.  The idea being that a good portion of the conversations will shift to empire-wide instead of realm-wide, helping with the unity problem.

Depending on how large your guild gets, with the people of three realms in it, I think you're biggest issue will be message traffic. I stepped down as leader of Sanguis Astroism on Dwilight so I could get away from all the messages. I just couldn't handle the flood of traffic, hundreds of messages in a couple hours, when some topic came up that *everyone* had to argue over.

And in guilds, you can't have separate channels like you can via the realm message groups. Everyone in a tier automatically gets all messages to their tier and all the lower tiers. This means that Elders can't escape the rabble.

2. I fully anticipate that over time (though probably a long time for Jenred if he stays in the position) people in one of the other realms will decide they don't like someone from a different realm being in control.  This is one of the (many) reasons why there is going to be an internal war system with internal rankings.  Each realm will have a rank, which will also determine what percentage of their taxes have to go to the Imperial throne, and the highest ranked realm chooses the Emperor.  The Emperor then stays in position until their realm loses their rank and a new Emperor is chosen.  Ranks change via a formal challenge where no outside assistance is allowed and the two realms fight from the first day of Spring to the last day of Autumn, with the winner taking the higher of the two ranks and the loser the lower of the two ranks in dispute.  Determining winners and losers may be non-trivial in some cases, but I think a system where the loser is whoever has the worst change in weighted production (production of a region multiplied by its population) on a percentage basis over the course of the challenge would work well enough.

Ritualized combat? What if one of the realms is in danger of wiping out the other? How far will the Empire let things go before he steps in and stops it? War without risking your life, or the life of your realm, is a bit stale.

5. The empire is certainly going to have the one position per family per realm rule Arcaea does now (at least after the initial colonization stages where it may be unavoidable) and I'd really like to make it one position per family for the entire empire.  The idea is to suck as many interested people in as we can by making positions more available than they are most places.

I hope you get enough people interested in that many positions. That's always been one of the most difficult things I've encountered lately: Finding enough volunteers to fill position vacancies.


I'm sure I had more ideas/comments, but I don't have time now to write them down.

[Indirik]

Yeah, that caught me by surprise.  I asked some fellow Arcachon nobles if anyone had any idea, and of course no one replied.  Can't wait to find out!   :D

You'll have to wait until he recovers. ;)

[Bedwyr]

Gloria:

Yes, I'm fairly certain that an experienced player can tell the difference between his noble character and his adventurer.  As for your other comment, I would suggest that this is not the proper place for it.

Igelfeld:

I'm sad about Arcachon's culture as well, but you may recall that Arcaea already did one of those "restore good relations and give back regions to a new group of ruling characters".  The response was to ignore all provisions of the peace treaty except territory, refuse to negotiate on imaginary disputes over what the terms meant, and send an assassin.  Second chances, sure.  Third?  Not so much.

[Bedwyr]

I talked to Matt about some of this via IRC, but here's some of my thoughts organized here for the forum readers.

Depending on how large your guild gets, with the people of three realms in it, I think you're biggest issue will be message traffic. I stepped down as leader of Sanguis Astroism on Dwilight so I could get away from all the messages. I just couldn't handle the flood of traffic, hundreds of messages in a couple hours, when some topic came up that *everyone* had to argue over.

Might be a problem, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Ritualized combat? What if one of the realms is in danger of wiping out the other? How far will the Empire let things go before he steps in and stops it? War without risking your life, or the life of your realm, is a bit stale.

If your realm gets wiped out during a challenge, then tough luck.  No one, Emperor included, will be able to intervene in challenges (with the possible exception of some threat arising that is a danger to the existence of the Empire as a whole, but I'm not certain even that should be an acceptable excuse).  In practice the only way I see challenges interrupted is if one of the Order of the Hawk military requirements is activated.

The Emperor will probably intervene with realms that are getting wiped out by out-Empire realms, but for internal wars, why would the Emperor care?  Only changes who owes him fealty, not how much.  Now, if you're wiping out the realm of, say, the Emperor's wife, when he's psychotically obsessed with her to the point where he thinks destroying realms and leveling cities and sowing the ground with salt because someone offered her a minor insult, then you may have a problem, but that's just politics.

I hope you get enough people interested in that many positions. That's always been one of the most difficult things I've encountered lately: Finding enough volunteers to fill position vacancies.

Oh, it'll be interesting, I'm sure, but even if I can't make it a hard rule it's going to be a rule to appoint anyone without a position over anyone with a position if they are a candidate.

[Bedwyr]

We all know about the personality of Arcaea as a realm, and one of the things that was interesting about Arcachnon was its unique style.

So do you think that this the realms under your rule will have the ability to develop unique characters? or will the central guild influence everyone to be a lot like Arcaea is now?

Forgot to respond to this part:

Yes, I think at least some of them will have unique characters.  The new realm on the Dark Isle, for instance, is going to take Arcaea's general friendliness toward infiltrators to its logical conclusion along with a state-sponsored religion, and is going to at least try to function as a place where people can find infils-for-hire.  The Kingdom of Arcaea itself is likely going to become considerably less confrontational, as both the main candidates to take the throne are more inclined toward talking than fighting, while I expect the new realm in Talex/Topenah to be even more confrontational than Arcaea currently is.  Beyond Arcachon, anyone interested in joining will be free to do so as long as they abide by the various rules, so we may end up incorporating other existing realms after wars or the like.  There's certainly not going to be an attempt to limit the variety of realms.

[Heq]

Just my .02$ on this, Arcachon had a unique style, but a lot of that was attached to the way the nobles were and really does transfer very quickly.

One of the problems was that as old players left the types and styles just didn't mesh as much, especially as the Arcachonian method was based around a religion which really had only a few driving personalities behind it.

Given that the religion lives on, that part of the style likely will as well, and as new realms come up they will have new styles of their own and hopefully some of them will be unique and fresh as well.  It really does just depend on the work those who run the realms put in, which means it's up to Matt to pick the right people to ensure the realms have a good "flavour".  Hell, I'm fairly sure that once Ciann and her wobblies get squared away large chunks of Arcachonian culture (let's be honest, Ulster Kelt) culture will continue to plague the lands.

Don't worry, with any luck Aenelia will end up in a war with C'thonia sooner rather then later (with luck by next spring season).

Though now I am seriously tempted to just move to Cathay and run a coup, but I can't come up with a valid IC reason.  Any suggestions?

[Igelfeld]

Though now I am seriously tempted to just move to Cathay and run a coup, but I can't come up with a valid IC reason.  Any suggestions?

You could aim for some high office you know that you will be rejected for and leave in disgust. But then you will have to harbor resentment for a time.

[Bedwyr]

Yeah, that'll be fun...The wandering Sartanian and Arcachonian exodii fight across the entire continent for eternity!  <grins>

As for Cathay...They're friends with Arcaea, and overturning them and attacking might help you get your old lands back?

[Indirik]

The new realm on the Dark Isle, for instance, is going to take Arcaea's general friendliness toward infiltrators to its logical conclusion along with a state-sponsored religion, and is going to at least try to function as a place where people can find infils-for-hire.

Oooooh.... color me interested.

[De-Legro]

Yup, we figured it was the perfect location. Long as the colony maintains good relations with their southern neighbours they should be able to send out infils AND avoid a war at their front door.