Messages

391

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: February 03, 2012, 02:26:33 PM »

I was in Fissoa and then Luria Nova for a while before moving over to Terran, and you're correct, other than a general sense that 'something was out there' I knew nothing at all about the Zuma except to see 'Zuma Coalition vs. (somebody)' 'Attacker victory.' In Madina, Fissoa, and Luria Nova, things were dull for the usual reason of too many regions, too few players, and too long travel times. The Zuma didn't enter into the equation.

But this is a red herring. In measuring the success of the Zuma, you can't look at 'who aren't they bothering.' If that's the metric then just axe them so that everybody can enjoy this status of 'not being bothered.' The metric should be 'what are they adding that wasn't there before,' at what cost, and is the benefit worth the cost. It's also (and obviously) important to divorce this temperature-taking from the impact on any one character or group of characters; fun in BM comes from gaining and losing status and then gaining it all over again, and the various deals and schemes that are the engines for those changes. I don't even necessarily think that the players themselves have to support the idea, but somebody, somewhere, should have a yard stick for 'positive impact of all this stuff we're doing,' even if that yard stick is just 'is it producing good RP.' From my narrow perspective, that answer is easily no. If there are others to the contrary, that's cool.

392

Far East Island / Re: Calm before the storm on FEI

« on: February 03, 2012, 02:20:56 PM »

Anaris is spot on here. There was miles of difference between a duel and a tournament. 'A dueling guild set up like a tournament' is a contradiction -- if it's a tournament then it's a tournament, and duels have nothing to do with tournaments.

The point of a tournament is sport. The point of a duel is satisfaction.

393

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: February 03, 2012, 02:14:12 PM »

The extent to which the people involved with the Zuma or with the devs have the attitude of the exasperated babysitter is remarkable. This is typically a sign of a death spiral in any campaign. You're talking to Vellos like he's a child when he's the guy who is most directly concerned with the Zuma as he lives next door. Maybe he doesn't have to like the Zuma, but who, exactly, do you think you are serving? Yourselves? Some nonspecific players who are reveling in all this? What is your mission as GMs and developers, and how do you measure the success of that mission?

I don't have a pony in this show. I don't care at all about what happens to my Dwilight toon, but this entire thread consists of people registering varying degrees of legitimate complaints and then being told how wrong they are for complaining. I understand how frustrating dealing with players can be, but at some point it seems to me that it doesn't matter if you think they're all morons if what you are doing is not having the desired effect.

Two out of every four good players playing within my bm-o-sphere in 2007 and 2008 left when the game terms were being dictated by region maintenance and TMP. Another one out of four left after SMA never panned out on Dwilight, with its enormous distances, low population, and tremendous travel times. I am not sure that BM knows what kind of player it wants, but like the Zuma, I wish it would decide already and start catering to at least one group. Players have the luxury of bitching without providing solutions or whining for no reason at all. Developers and GMs do not. You run a service. I suggest you examine why.

394

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: February 03, 2012, 03:24:59 AM »

Truthfully though, this whole conversation is starting to bore me because it seems no one is even interested in trying to figure out what makes the Zuma tick.

My character is standing in a volcano and has just asked Haktoo what makes her tick.

The trouble, though, regardless of the response my character gets (which may well be to get his head chopped off at the rate he's going) -- the Zuma don't really make me want to know what's making them tick. They're not intriguing. I get the explanation for their language but that doesn't mean it isn't a handicap.

I would challenge anyone with the unfortunate job of running the Zuma to run them without a great CS advantage. It's too much of an easy I Win button and that dominates the way most people think about them. I'm enjoying myself on Dwilight more than usual (which is to say, at all) because I don't care if my character dies and my character cares less if he dies than most do (since he's old).

SMA done right breeds interesting characters. Putting a force on the game board with a whole lot of power makes people pay attention but it doesn't make them interesting. I'm not saying that there aren't a dozen interesting things about them that I'm just not privy to, either. But the structural problems make it very unlikely that many of those things will be revealed. Think about some medieval antagonists: Eleanor of Aquitaine or any of the princes in Lion in Winter, Robert the Bruce in Braveheart, or even Denethor in LOTR. They are complex characters with often conflicting goals that get them into trouble. An antagonist ought to be able to muck up the natural order of things somewhat, but with finesse - not by merely stomping on the board until the pieces fall off.

395

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: February 03, 2012, 01:21:34 AM »

Honestly, I haven't really seen anything serious come from the anti-Zuma faction that doesn't boil down to either, "Having GM characters on Dwilight is bad, no matter what they do," or "They mess up all my plans, which players are allowed to do, but GMs are not allowed to do."

I can only speak for myself, but I came to BM to play in a medieval setting against other players. I came to Dwilight for SMA. Dwilight today has neither SMA nor much to do with other players (in my part of the world, at least).

I don't think it's possible or desirable to somehow prove empirically that GM characters are bad.  In real life the players pick the GM and they all talk about the nature of the game they're going to play.  Of course, there are reciprocal disadvantages for the GM -- you don't get to pick your players and you can't possibly tailor what you do to a handful of players.

I guess I just feel as though, if you asked me to stir things up on a continent in Battlemaster, there is so much possibility within the scope of regular feudal intrigue, so much content to be mined from a properly serious medieval atmosphere, that I wonder what the advantage of the Zuma is. I freely admit to being ignorant about a lot of what is going on, but part of the fun should be in the discovery; but I don't see how I'm meant to do that. There are no descriptions in the Zuma regions except for the Volcano, and it's not much of one. The writing style behind the Daimons is childish, on purpose to be sure, but this makes it difficult for them to be good villains, if that is even what they are meant to be.  The Zuma and the Daimons are scary only in game-terms and CS. They can knock down our game pieces. But that's the easiest tool at a GM's disposal. I'm hoping for a '...so what?'

396

Far East Island / Re: Calm before the storm on FEI

« on: February 02, 2012, 12:44:17 AM »

That's nothing new. I OOC-banned a few people with names like that back in Lasanar's day.

397

BattleMaster Expansions / Re: Beyond the Blight - not selling well ?

« on: January 14, 2012, 01:51:39 PM »

The best writing I've ever seen on BM was during a period from around 2006 to 2007 in the Far East when, for whatever reason, there were a lot of medieval roleplayers around.  Lasanar, Ethiala, Nighthelm, SoC,  and early Cathay. They dug the feudal system and intrigue and politics in a way that a lot of players today seem to find boring or secondary.  I would've spent a few bucks to see that arranged in an ebook.  This was when we wrote things like the RP Primer and the wiki entry on Oaths os Fealty. Not everybody agreed with this stuff but those who didn't had alternatives and it was discussed a lot because there was a lot of RP going on.

For better or worse, most of those players moved on. I spoke with about a half-dozen of them during and afterwards and their consensus was that BM itself was forcing them into playing a certain way through vehicles like peasants kicking out lords or Too Much Peace (though TMP wasn't a big problem then). I first heard the term 'PeasantMaster' around this time.

I bring this up not to re-make their point, because I think they already made it with their departure, but to identify one thing that I witnessed that is responsible for the reduction in RP (particularly in good RP). The retention rate isn't very good. Not every realm on every continent has always had much RP, but usually half the realms I played in back then did. Today, none of them do. Some of them have interesting stuff going on and are still fun (for me) but none of them have stories like they used to.

I'd pick up Beyond the Blight and read through it if I saw it in a store (since I haven't played much on BT to know what things are like there) but I wouldn't pay to read what passes for the RP scene today.

398

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: January 08, 2012, 05:01:47 PM »

Okay, I get it. Maybe you're right that players are just griping because their characters and their characters' realms are having a hard time.  I do play in Terran but I haven't been there long and don't have a stake in it as a player. You know more than I do about that side of things.

That's still not license to be a jerk about it, so please either find a way to express what you are saying like a decent human being, or don't post.

399

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: January 08, 2012, 04:52:28 PM »

I guess my point is that I don't see anyone other than you talking about 'rights to play where you want' or anything like it. All you are doing is bludgeoning some of BM's best players over the head with rules they already know and aren't complaining about as if you were a parent explaining them to a child.

It isn't that I don't believe you. It's that what you're saying isn't relevant and the tone you're using isn't appropriate for BM noobs, much less some of the oldest and best players left around after all these years. You aren't 'taking a stand,' you're just being a jerk and muddying what should and could be a useful discussion of the role of GM plots in the game.

400

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: January 08, 2012, 04:42:24 PM »

I thought the point of this thread was simply to have players express their opinions about the Zuma. I don't see any harm in that, and I've learned quite a bit from several of the criticisms and some of the defense.

I don't see anybody claiming 'I donated, I demand that we get rid of the Zuma' and I don't see any reason for the consistent ad hominem attacks you are making. You are speaking as though you have some kind of special authority or understanding of the rules. As far as I can tell, you are a not even especially old player who feels entitled to troll the forum because you don't like some of the other players.

I've always enjoyed the realms I've been in with guys like Lyman and the Apasurian player whose name escapes me, but your collective contribution to BM appears to be the proverbial poop in the pool, both in game and out. What on earth do you get out of it?

401

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: January 08, 2012, 04:16:07 AM »

Typically the point at which a GM is saying 'oh, you don't know how hard it is to be a GM' is the point where they should stop being a GM.

One thing that GM-driven events are (or at least can be) good for is battling stagnation, and that is a problem in lots of BM realms - players get Ducal seats and then just park there, and in low-population realms there isn't enough population to have popular support for opposition.

The trouble is that the thing that makes BM fun is the organic interaction of lots of nobles with different and sometimes overlapping agendas. One or even several GMs can't really replicate this very easily. I've left BM a couple times and the thing that's keeping me here now is that I decided that I no longer care what happens to my characters - they're going to get into trouble and stir things up because really, why else am I playing? I've played rulers and Dukes and Judges and had my fun there, and now that I've made my mission to be a gadfly, I'm having a lot more fun.

Sorry that's a little OT. I do think that it is a fair question to ask 'how would you have done Dwilight,' because BM was a different place when Dwilight was made. If I were making it today, I'd make it smaller, lift the 1 character restriction, and enforce SMA as was originally intended. A lot of the code development has been great.

402

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: January 08, 2012, 01:29:36 AM »

Speaking only for myself, and keeping in mind that I haven't really seen anything other than your Arcaea character, there is quite a lot of distance between 'serious novelist' and 'guy who writes letters about fired chicken and ESPN.'  Yeah, I get that they fried food in the middle ages. It's not a basis for RPing a noble character, so if you're a leading player on Dwilight, I hope Fred is your comic relief valve.

There is a lot of mediocre RP on BM and always has been, but most of the time it's because people don't have a lot of experience in a written forum. I've seen quite a few of them turn out really good stuff after a while, but I'd take even the mediocre attempt over a troll.

403

Dwilight / Re: Zuma/Daimons

« on: January 07, 2012, 08:26:18 PM »

When Dwilight was first announced, I was very excited about the prospect of a 'serious' medieval atmosphere.

Then it turned out to be huge (not a bad thing, it's an impressive map) but the one character limitation meant that it was and has always been underpopulated. Every realm I've been in in Dwilight (Madina, Fissoa, Luria Nova, and Terran) has had less activity on its busiest days than most realms I've been in elsewhere, because they all have 20-30 players rather than 40-60 players. This isn't just a Dwilight thing (I know the player population has been going down anyway) but it's exacerbated because of the character limitation. So already the 'serious' medieval atmosphere is off to a tough start because you don't have enough people to fill out all the ranks. Everybody is a region lord.

Then you have the Zuma. I have to say that I haven't had a lot of direct interaction - mostly I've witnessed Terran's / Hireshmont's interaction. It seems like they are run well, that is to say, the GMs seem to put a lot of thought and effort into them. My problem is that they just aren't SMA. Not for me, at least. It's fantasy on a continent that was supposed to be seriously medieval, and instead it's consequently less seriously medieval because the nature of the game is now man vs. nature rather than man vs. man. For some people, this is legitimately a cool thing. For me, it's not interesting, because it's not what I like about BM.

Having said that, I think there used to be more 'SMA' players 5 years ago -- when I was more active and had some friends playing -- than there are now. Today we seem to have a lot more 'team sports in knight costume' players, and for that, the Zuma could be just what the doctor ordered.  If I were a BM GM, I'd say it's a tough call as to whether you want to cater to the players you have, or the players you want.

404

Far East Island / Re: Toupellon: The next FEI superpower?

« on: December 09, 2011, 05:47:02 PM »

Remember that Toupellon has 'only lords vote' and that first choice = 4 votes, 2nd choice = 2 votes, and Galiard couldn't vote for himself (not being a lord). With each of of the landed candidates voting for themselves, the election was pretty much decided by three region lords.

It was pretty cool, though, lots of last minute horse trading and 'I'll give so-and-so my second vote if such-and-such.' Not as exciting as when everybody can vote (though that's also self interest -- those elections are much easier to win if you're Galiard...) but having been through dozens of elections it was interesting to see that people like James and Merlin (and Merlin's brother, also a Duke) could have rallied their vassals - 4-5 region lords + three Dukes - and easily just chosen a candidate to win, but they went out for themselves and Claude being plain old fashioned diligent and earnest carried the day.

Galiard's political baggage has definitely cost him support in the past but it didn't seem to be much of a liability this time. Biggest problem he had was that he's now so $#!%! old that half the region lords don't even know who he is!

405

Far East Island / Re: Toupellon: The next FEI superpower?

« on: December 07, 2011, 08:11:39 PM »

Toupellon has a lot of would-be rulers and hardly any structure. Anatole had lots of friends but he did very little in terms of defining Toupellon outside of 'it's a Kingdom that's not Ohnar West and it's not Cathay.' But all the actual magnates are the same ones from Ohnar West and Cathay: James, two Quinceys, Taylin, Vulpes. There's only one new Duke in the entire mix (Claude). Several of the region lords are new(er) but I would bet on Toupellon's fate coming down to whether it survives its first crisis, no matter who takes the throne.

Cathay in its latter days and Ohnar were both dominated by very weak central governments and very powerful Dukes whose decisions (or non-decisions) had a lot more to do with what happened than the ruler. I haven't seen any evidence that Toupellon is any different -- Anatole didn't make a lot of enemies (outside of neo-Cathay's signposts) precisely because he rarely rocked the boat.