1) Things happen that cause battles to be fought, regions to be won and lost, rulers to be overthrown, generally politically motivated
2) Things that give you something interesting to read and react to other than automated turn-change messages, that give interesting roleplay opportunity and some memorable moments
both (1) and (2) has its value, but without (1) other things do not work for too long
I'll agree with that much - it becomes stale if there's no change in realms, both in terms or their size or their council members and region lords.
But I'd also say that (2) is just as important as (1), and just as interesting as (1) - often more so.
they have many things to learn about how to lead their troops, how to be good army troop leaders, how to support region the best, and where they are mostly useful.
I think in terms of 'making stuff happen', there are two sorts of 'things' and we're probably talking about both at once here.
A) Roleplay
B) Mechanics
When I join the game, as a newbie, I can say that there is precious little of either. And I know that there's meant to be little in a lightweight game, but I mean there's little to do in comparison with other players playing the same game. Council members, Dukes, Lords - they all have more to do of both these things.
Years ago I moaned for a good while about the fact that simple knights have so little to do in game mechanic terms. You say they have lots to learn, but this really isn't true, as JPierreD points out. Every thing you do is determined by your army marshal (your settings, where you travel, whether you loot, hunt or do civil work etc - and doing anything else is considered disobedient). And one or two things are determined by your lord (estate settings). There is pretty much Nothing you can do as a simple knight that requires you to turn your brain on. When I first started, it took me about one day to understand all the options available to me - the wiki is good, I can read, and that's about all there is to it. I had two knights and one bureaucrat, and it was then a full year before any one of them got any position of any kind other than being a simple knight. I certainly didn't need a year to learn how to be a knight.
Something I campaigned for back then, and still would love to see now, is more options for simple knights. Things like a unit setting for your troop that differs for each troop (a bit like their favourite type of entertainment) and affects how they fight - which would be something that a marshal could not just send you instructions for. Or advanced things you could do with your own estate, or something.
One of the two arguments back then, against that sort of thing, was that "players in high positions don't have much more to click on than simple knights". Which I still think is untrue, because there are more options, including more influencial options and more though-provoking options, for lords, dukes and particularly council members. And therefore I'd still love more options for simple knights. I suspect that's something for another thread though.
The other of the two arguments back then were that "you shouldn't be just wanting to click buttons - it's a roleplay game". And to a large degree, they were right in that. It is indeed an RP game, and ever since then I tried harder to do more RP and worry less about buttons. And I think that's been good. However, you can only do this if there is some roleplay going on to interact with, otherwise you're just writing a monologue or writing a book. And that's where we come back to this thread where we need more people to roleplay. And, for new players, we need some of that roleplay to involve them.
If people have the high positions, with all the buttons to press, they need to give something back to the simple knights by providing something they can roleplay to - because besides roleplay, there is nothing for a simple knight to do. I still don't agree that this _needs_ to be something that is political and realm-changing - I would say that some of it actively _needs_ not to be political so it's more inclusive for newbies. But I do agree that if there is never anything political and realm-changing then that's not good either.
i saw guy who is excellent rp-er, spent some months in the realm, but when he was granted lordship, he destroyed the most stable region in the realm doing terrible region work, while being fully convinced that he is game veteran already
Is that a bad thing? If he was roleplaying his character to be useless, then he probably did the correct thing in-character. And if he wasn't doing it on purpose, then surely completely destroying your realm's most stable region is a fine event to inspire some roleplay - it is very much 'making something happen', isn't it?
i could only recommend that you try something on duchy or even region level at beginning, to initiate at least minimal conversation and find some friends, sometimes it works much better than sending letters to all
The easiest ways to get interactions is to write personal letters to people, as they feel compelled to reply. Sadly most people you have reason to write to are those up the chain - your lord, your duke, your marshal, for example - most of whom are involved in political message groups that take more of their attention. Armies are often the best place as there are lots of knights with nothing better to do, though of course a newbie doesn't have an army for a few days at the start. The worst armies are the ones full of region lords who just stay in their regions holding court and not talking to anyone, which ironically are usually the 'defensive' armies that newbies are often assigned to at first.
