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What would be stopping you from doing that?

I was expecting that response

1) I didn't suggest any code changes (the second idea was merely to turn off a couple of things)

2) The point being, the way it was designed isn't working very well, to the point of having the Admin micro-manage relations now.

So why not trying something different, instead of ramming through the same non-working idea?


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So - let's try it? Rulers of East Continent, just announce to one another that you're going to start doing this & let's try it for six months. It doesn't actually require any intervention or approval from the admins

Tell your Councils & realms you're not going to punish "minor discretions" & see what your players come up with on their own.

I predict you'll end up with groups of players working together to do much the same thing, only the fights will be organic & come about much more quickly than they do via Ruler negotiations like we do now

The only thing that has *ever* been stopping this is punishment from your councils. So - stop punishing and let the game play itself from the bottom up.

What I would *really* like to see - and I suppose this is just a pipe dream - is to pick one island & turn off the ability to fine/ban nobles, and just see how characters react when they don't have the threat of a hatchet over their necks.

Just as a social experiment. I'm guessing you could learn from it the same way that MIT didn't put in sidewalks at first, and just watched where the grass got worn down, and then used those paths

I don't think you'd have the crazy chaos that everyone fears. i think you'd have a game where people were enjoying themselves a lot more

This has been my long-standing view, and I have seen a couple of posts here that seem to also have sussed what I feel the true problem is:

Turn Battlemaster from a top-down game to bottom-up one.

If rulers & judges would release their death grip on everything and let small groups of nobles go on border raids against each other, or ride off as mercenaries for a cause that interests them or their religion, the whole gridlock thing would be a moot point.

Let nobles have incentives to go loot and attack what is around them. When it goes back and forth for a while, and builds up - viola! reason for war.

The game has always been too much "smoky back rooms" where a few people plan everything. As other posts have pointed out - these people are risk averse, and at the moment there is no reason to start a war for gain.

So - let small groups of nobles go off and raid, and if they bump into a raiding party from another realm, they fight over the right to loot the region. Bring things down to the individual noble level.

Let them role play about it, and RP outrage, or RP bloodlust to go get some loot, or whatever. Let tensions build organically.

Get rid of the automatic fines and the council members shouting to "get in line!" at everyone, and let people go make their own fun.

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I see the recent dev initiatives as well-intentioned, but like The Ice and many other things, doomed to fail because - you can't legislate morality, and you can't force player behavior in Battlemaster