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Topics - Bedwyr

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31
Helpline / Advanced Mentoring and History: How to Be a Banker
« on: May 09, 2011, 08:05:22 PM »
This will be fun...Explaining the tax system and...yeah, stuff about food management, as Bankers still do that in some cases.

32
Helpline / Advanced Mentoring and History: How to Be a Duke
« on: May 09, 2011, 08:02:52 PM »
What it would be nice to see here: Explanations of all the different buttons along with how/when to use them, how to handle knights, how to handle lords, how to handle relationship with Ruler/realm, what to do with all that shiny, shiny new gold you have.

33
Helpline / Advanced Mentoring and History: How to Be a Lord
« on: May 09, 2011, 07:59:50 PM »
Two things would be very helpful for this page: Explanation of the different buttons to click, how often you have to worry about them, what you need to do, etc and then the more intangible stuff about knights and duchies.

34
Helpline / Advanced Mentoring and History: How to Gain Influence
« on: May 08, 2011, 05:27:25 AM »
How to gain influence:

First rule is simple: Talk.  Very, very rarely will you get anything without getting your voice out there.  But don't be stupid about it.  The new guy who starts mouthing off about how the realm should completely change it's diplomacy makes more enemies than friends.  So, how do you talk without risking making a fool of yourself?

1. Ask questions.  Ask your liege, ask your Marshal, ask your Ruler, ask the General, ask your Duke.  Use personal letters, not letters to the realm.  Letters to message groups or guilds can work, but again, you have to know which ones are important and which aren't.  And once you have someone who answers questions, don't let the correspondence die.  Ask them about themselves, start to talk with them about whatever you can think of.

2. Talk after battles.  Congratulate the enemy on a well-fought battle.  Invite people to an impromptu post-battle celebration, and send a brief RP so they know it's not just polite words.  Congratulate Sir So-and-So for wounding the enemy General.  Offer Lord Thus-and-Such sympathy for being wounded in the first round.  Whatever you do, word it in such a way that it calls for the other person to respond.

Once you've gotten to know a few people and understand a bit better how things work, the actual influence gathering stage begins.  There are wildly different systems in Battlemaster, which require different approaches, but in essence figure out whether the position you want is selected by the Ruler, a Duke, all the Dukes, all the Lords, or the entire realm.  Each of these requires a somewhat different approach, and how you go about getting an elected position is rather different from how you get an appointed position, but this list should help with everything in general.

1. Find out what, if any, competition you have for the position.
2. Find out what traditions, if any, the realm has for the position.
3. Find out who really picks positions (does the King tell the Dukes who to appoint?  Does the Duchess ask her lords who to appoint to a lordship in-duchy?).
4. Send personal messages asking to all involved what you can do to prove yourself worthy.
5. Do not fixate on a single position, but stay flexible for other options if they arise.  Once you get one position, others are much easier.
6. Find out what factions exist in the realm (if you do a favour for the Duke of the capital, is that going to annoy the Judge?  Who is the Queen more likely to listen to?).
7. What religions are important to the realm/Ruler/Dukes/Lords, how seriously do they take religious affiliation?
8. Does the realm tend to reward Courtiers and the like who help fix regions, Traders who bring food to the starving cities, Warriors who fight well on the front lines...?
9. Find out where most discussions take place (the War Council?  A Senate?  One or more of the armies?  A guild, or religion?) and what you need to do to get in that group so you can start talking.
10. Spend some extra time making your character real, having actual motivations and such, to make it clear that this is a real person to those you talk to.

35
Helpline / Advanced Mentoring and History
« on: May 08, 2011, 04:42:44 AM »
(To those I mentioned this to before, sorry it took so long but I got slammed with a bunch of crises with a number of characters and couldn't convince myself to start this up before now.)

One thing I've noticed for years in this game is that those who know how to get positions get them consistently, across the game, with whatever character.  And, as I got more experienced, I noticed this happening to me...And started figuring out the reasons why.  First reason: You get to know people, and the more people you know the better your chances of getting power.  Second reason: Once you've proved you're capable, everyone can find out pretty easily and will trust that you won't cause the capital to starve or the like.  And third reason: The ways to get power and influence tend to be the same across the game, within certain parameters.

If you're lucky, you get a good Mentor or someone to act as one to help you figure this out.  If you hang out on IRC you could find people to help too.

But, a lot of people don't want to spend time hanging around on IRC, and they don't get lucky on Mentors.  So, this thread is (I hope) one additional way to get help.

This is where you go when you want to find someone to help you figure out how to organize a successful secession.  This is where you go when you have no idea why everyone's attacking your realm because of some sneak attack conducted by a Ruler of your realm that you've never even heard of.  This is where you go when you need help at the top ends of Battlemaster play.

And, possibly, you can find someone to IC hook up and take you on as a protege.

Now, besides myself, the players of several other families have agreed to help answer questions and possibly write up histories and guides: Vellos, Anaris, Quasath, Indirik, Kindon, and a number of others who agreed to help on a provisional basis.  Several of the Top 20 fame list, families with 30+ fame, people who know politics and history on Atamara, Dwilight, the Far East, Beluaterra, and the EC in intimate detail (possibly the Colonies as well, but I'm really not sure).

Anyone who wants to help is of course welcome, I just listed those names to make an impression  ;)

So, please spread the word. 

P.s. This thread is all OOC, of course, but I've considered trying to start some sort of IC organization to mimic it, just not sure how to go about it.

Index of Advanced Mentoring and History threads:

How to gain influence: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,517.0.html
How to be a lord: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,524.0.html
How to be a duke: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,525.0.html
How to be a banker: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,526.0.html
How to be a general: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,527.0.html
How to be a judge: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,529.0.html
How to be a ruler: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,528.0.html

36
BM General Discussion / Favorite thing you have accomplished in-game?
« on: April 20, 2011, 07:12:46 AM »
For me, I have to say that getting basically the entirety of the Far East to accept a relatively minor insult to Jenred's wife as a legitimate casus belli, including the realm being attacked, was pretty awesome.

37
Feature Requests / Community Manager Attention List
« on: March 27, 2011, 07:27:15 AM »
Alrighty everyone, here's your friendly Community Manager for another thing to (hopefully) make everyone's life easier.  One thing I've been noticing (on a few feature requests and mentoring improvement ideas and such) is that at some point the feature request is fleshed out or ideas are developed to the point where it either needs dev action or rejection.

So, since my job as Community Manager is to act as sort of a filter to make sure the devs don't get overwhelmed with stuff, when you think your feature request is fleshed out, or the idea needs the eye of someone on the dev team, post here with a link to the thread in question and a brief summary of what you want looked at.

This way, I won't feel guilty if I stop obsessively following every topic on this forum because everything will still get done.

38
Helpline / Best way to deal with this situation: Can't Colonize?
« on: March 24, 2011, 07:55:04 PM »
So, here it is.  FEI, Arcaea/Arcachon war.  Leaving aside the wider diplomatic issues (which exist, of course, but I know more or less how I'm going to handle them) the war is very shortly going to be a straight Arcaea vs. Arcachon war.  Arcachon's military has been completely crushed, and this is the second time the capital has been sacked with other regions ransacked.  Military dominance is not a direct problem.

The issue is that the populace of the one city Arcachon has hates Arcaea too much (I suspect from the efforts of Priests/Diplomats in lowering sympathy, as it didn't used to be that bad) for our Diplomats to overcome, and since CTO's work like FTO's we can't even start the takeover.

Enlod is 530 miles away from Arcaea's capital of Remton, and we'd have to take and hold four intervening regions that are filled with followers of Arcachon's state religion.  Possible, but blasted difficult.

I think the easiest way to handle this is to drive Enlod rogue and destroy the rest of the realm and then send diplomats in with lots of gold to raise sympathy to an appropriate level.  And the easiest way to do that seems to be looting the place, especially by removing all food that they could get to starve the city out.

And before anyone suggests "give up" that's not an option as Arcachon has blatantly broken treaties and refused all attempts at peace or negotiation.  As far as I can tell their entire existence right now is devoted to hurting Arcaea as much as possible.

39
General Talk / How to: Never have to retype a letter again
« on: March 12, 2011, 05:54:55 AM »
So, I installed this a good long while back, and it's never failed me yet.  I try to spread word around every time someone cries about losing that giant post, as I remember the pain.

Lazarus add-on stores forms (which includes all battlemaster messages) even if you crash out, turn starts running after you hit send, or anything else causes your letter to fail.  I've only used it for Firefox, but they've got Chrome and Safari versions as well.  Saved me so many times I lost count after only a month (I'm a forgetful kind of guy).

http://lazarus.interclue.com/download

40
Roleplaying / Family reunion: House Bedwyr (With Permission)
« on: March 12, 2011, 05:31:34 AM »
(OOC Please see http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,176.msg1747.html#new for a basic explanation of this)

Word was sent to the Far East, Atamara, Dwilight, and the ancient East that all members of House Bedwyr were to attend a reunion with such friends, allies, and retainers as they felt appropriate.  The House had lost cohesion, with high-ranking members not knowing the others, petty feuds keeping them from corresponding, and the long-festering debates on uses of the family coffers needed to be resolved, as did the precise nature of the blood-alliance with House Kindon, various lesser alliances with other Houses, and the blood-feuds proposed against others still.

This would be...Interesting, to say the least.

41
This Forum / Ideas for Roleplaying via the Forum
« on: March 12, 2011, 05:26:14 AM »
Now, the main game is, and should remain, the primary source of roleplaying in the game, so I see the roleplaying section on the forum as more of an area where roleplaying that the game can't handle well should be done.  For instance, roleplays that may take more time than game-roleplays can be fit in to (for instance, everyone can only sit in a given region so long before someone has to leave), or roleplays between characters that can't meet for various reasons (if your old war buddy is on Dwilight, perhaps you can take a vacation to go visit him while your realm is at peace).

Toward that end, I think one of the easiest things to do would be to roleplay family reunions.  The nature of the character restrictions on the game means that it's pretty much impossible for families to meet and plot, but families should have options to be more cohesive than they are.  And...Let's face it, it would be hilarious to see all the gossiping ("Good gods, can you believe what that little trollop is wearing?  The Colonies are so backward!").

And, you could have associates of various kinds at that reunion.  For instance, Koli, puffed up with his own current importance, might ask a few of his close followers to come join him to show off how well he's doing.  Jenred would of course take his wife and children, and might invite various other Arcaeans.  Malcolm would invite his Queen for his own complicated reasons.

Other families might meet in secret, or have grand open parties.

So, I would suggest when making a reunion topic that you put whether it is Open (anyone can join), With Permission (you can ask and may be allowed in), Invitation-only (only those given invitations, don't ask), or Private (only me!!!!).  Obviously, you can't stop people from trying to gate-crash, but the various guards of your House will be more than sufficient to deal with them, and if someone is a pest, call upon the almighty powers of the mods (grins).

42
BM General Discussion / Character Alignments
« on: March 09, 2011, 05:19:18 AM »
Now, clearly, characters are more complicated than standard D&D alignment systems, but I'd be interested in seeing how people view their own characters' alignments.  So, for me...

Rhennthyl is a little uncertain in my head at this point, can't really say.

Lucator is very new, but I'm guessing chaotic evil.

Malcolm is my most complicated character, he was (and is) highly selfish, but very much interested in the long-term game so played at being highly honorable with some success.  Nowadays...His selfishness is somewhat tempered by a couple of events that shook him out of it.  Not sure how unselfish he might become.

Koli is Lawful neutral with a few evil tendencies.  Very much a controlling man.

Jenred...Is neutral crazy.  He thinks he's good (hell, he thinks he's a Paladin fulfilling the will of his goddess and leading the Far East into a new golden age) but he is psychotically obsessed with his wife to the point where if she were killed I think he'd quite happily burn down the entire continent to make a pyre worthy of her.

43
I thought I'd bring back two things I always liked.

1. I've heard tales of people on the FEI originally talking about plans and the like OOC so that those who couldn't be in the loop for IC reasons could still hear about the fun stuff.

2. A few newspapers used to do interviews with various nobles, and I always liked reading them.

So!  Anyone who's interested, ask away.  Just direct the question to Matthew for OOC questions and Jenred (with titles as appropriate) for the IC ones.

For those who just want to level accusations and question Jenred's sexuality and the like, keep it IG.  This is just for a bit of Q&A.

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