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If the rogue peasants could use the RC's, that would be fantastic.

Oooh, that would be quite nasty. They would be the local "freedom fighters". So a strong RC would become a little more like the proverbial two-edged sword.

I like this idea gameplay-wise (as far as mortality goes, which I don't like from the go), but it does feel way too gamey.

It's balancing between realism and gameplay. A sudden death, whilst more realistic, does not let a player bring the character to a closure and wrap things up. I am just pointing out that a sudden death without a warning is not the only option we have to near-immortality.

It has to do with what the actions of our characters matter. You do not now really risk your life and limb when entering combat. Nor do infiltrators accomplish anything on a more permanent basis. The gradual creeping of death would serve its place if it increases the thrill you feel for the actions you do with your character. Just imagine tournaments, where you might actually get hurt and lose something, but with a much lesser chance for it for the youngsters. They would feel different. Risking life and limb, as they really did back then.

Not to mention making ordinary duels count for something.

It's nothing harsh or sudden. Nothing that the players would not anticipate. It would still take quite awhile for an ordinary noble to run through his hundred hurts.

The math of it could be that the age of your character would be the percentage of the chance of losing one point when wounded. Or something similar.

One perhaps a little silly approach to mortality would be to have a stat called "health". It would be something that started out at 100 and various incidents during the harsh life of a noble would gradually drop it until at 0 your character would die. Age would factor into it but would not automatically drop it. It could be a soft thing in a way that getting wounded _might_ drop it one point at an earlier age, but later with an increased chance. Perhaps even so (unrealistically) that multiple stabs soon one after one would have a lowered chance to drop it.

So you would know where you character is at any given stage. You would know when it was "soon his time", so you could plan your RP:s around it and build his story to a closure. Again, not realistic, but storywise better. In this approach age would be a numeric representation of, well, your character's age, while health would be what you lose when you are tortured and wounded, which at the end effects the hours at your disposal.

This would turn infiltrator attacks from a nuisance to something serious, but yet not overpowered. Each stab would be a meaningful step towards the death of the target character.

100 health would be a nice round number, but it could be any other number too. 100 would be quite sufficient for creating a good storyline.

More monsters for Dwilight, please. I much enjoyed the former frontier feel of the continent, even if it limited interaction with the other realms. It has been ages since I have been playing on any of the other continents, so I will say nothing of them.

Anaris,

I would be happy of the chance to die of wounds too. It would be a start, wouldn't it? And at the same time it would be a true test and a vote for just how popular people see the mortality feature, if hero is not the choice of class for them for other reasons.

Tom,

If the code is there already, can you give me and the likes of me a box we can tick to activate it for our characters?

This. You will just need more cities if you want to have more non-city regions. Heck, Sirion has like 7 cities?

Hmm, I suppose I was thinking with Dwilight perspective, as I do not play anywhere else.

I dont see that as a soft cap against large realms as i understand it, the only thing it will limit is taking over too much regions that are not cities. And large rural realms with minimal number of cities are not that big of a threat to anything at all.

What is your definition of "large"? Mine implies that it is a realm that has many regions. Rural regions are regions too. What am I missing here?

You could make a soft cap against large realms this way:

Cities produce documents. Distant regions that do not produce documents require them in order to maintain some vital regional stat. If you fail to support your region with enough documents, it will require increasingly more bureaucratic work and courts to maintain it - the more so the biggest your realm is and the furthest you are from the capital.

So, you can have a large realm, but it will cost you the price of the documents that you buy from foreign cities that do not need them so badly.

Yeah, that would be very good.

Hmm... were we not going to stop posting IG stuff like that on the forums? Or was I just dreaming?

Cavalier is more like a roleplay feature anyway. I too like the classic chevalier approach, but always with some twist or an achilles' heel of some kind. Though the best class to play by far is the priest, especially if you have rather sporadic access and limited time to the game. You need not bother with all the orders and everyday errands and can focus on rp alone.

How about this:

When a city falls from realm control whilst there are rogue troops present, have a possibility that it will turn into a citadel of the undead. It will be harder to regain it, as the undead would even use the walls of the city (but would not repair them). The city would also then become a hotspot for spawning. Though perhaps the undead from the city would generally not wander all that far from their home. Maybe the same for the towns.

The point? Making it more challenging to regain lost cities. Because PvE can be fun and a source of RP history too, especially in the absence of PvP wars.

* * *

As for the idea of tying spawn rates to war activity: it could be something that does not have a certain definite threshold. It would not be an "on/off" switch. Instead having your realm involved in PvP battles would reduce the likelihood of a spawn hotspot forming inside your realm. So, some would game the system and make mock wars. So what? They might always escalate, and beat the stuffing out of just waiting for something to happen. And you would never get a message indicating the effect of your battles on the spawn chance.

Yes, it could then happen that in the middle of a really exciting war with lots of battles there might still be a hotspot forming inside your realm that would totally ruin the war for you. Or, despite a long time of peace, there might not be any hotspots in your realm at all. It could happen, but it beats it being totally random.

As everyone who hasn't been living under a rock knows, I am no longer a friend of invasions. However, I do like the idea of not simply raising spawn rates, but change them in waves. So instead of rogues being a constant, low-level nuisance the way they are today, there would be times of increased and times of lowered spawn rates, much like the weather.

Definitely a step forward.

Ooh, yes. This is the thing. Rogue spawn could be much rarer, but when they hit, they should definitely require your attention. The analogy to weather is good. It is not constant and predictable, even if it has its trends - and it does not hit every place with equal severity. At times there are horrible storms with equally horrible consequences, but they are rare.

There is an interesting idea there. We could seperate them out by region or geography. For example, undead could prefer the south and monsters the north (or vice versa, or east/west - I'm just brainstorming here). And there could be "centers" of their activity, especially dangerous places, etc. That might give things more variety.

Oooh, I like. You could give the mountains to the trolls and the forests to the undead. So we could have some real cursed mountains and haunted forests. With narrow and long continents one could tend to occupy the other end while the other one occupies another end. Or have their "bases" roughly located there.

With big continents surrounded by seas, you could have the coastal regions spawn some strange sea creatures (or even "sea savages") that drive the characters inland.