Zuma/Daimons

[vonGenf]

Confessions from a bunch of members from the moot should override the one dude with the forged letter. At least to prevent them from attacking right away. My opinion of what garret's role should be is just a straight up ambassador that relays messaged between other players and those in charge of the Zuma. He is the ambassador and if players can't use him to tell the Zuma stuff then the Zuma is even more flawed.

The way the Zuma attacked Terran over that forged letter was way to trigger happy especially coming from GM's.

I don't think it is fair to comment on the relevance of the reasons they have for war. After all, we don't do it for any other realm. Some reasons are good, some are bad, some are completely made up. All's fair in love and war.

Now, the sentiment I think many people have is that given the overpowering of the Zuma, they should be held to an higher standard than other players. I agree with this. This applies to SMA behaviour, to the obligation to create fun for other parties, and to survival considerations (it is less acceptable for the Zuma to seek the complete destruction of a human realm than it would be for another human realm). However, it does not follow that the Zuma must follow a "clear" kind of logic, or that they should be convinced of the things that you are convinced of.

[De-Legro]

Confessions from a bunch of members from the moot should override the one dude with the forged letter. At least to prevent them from attacking right away. My opinion of what garret's role should be is just a straight up ambassador that relays messaged between other players and those in charge of the Zuma. He is the ambassador and if players can't use him to tell the Zuma stuff then the Zuma is even more flawed.

The way the Zuma attacked Terran over that forged letter was way to trigger happy especially coming from GM's.

Confessions from a bunch of members from the moot should override the one dude with the forged letter. At least to prevent them from attacking right away. My opinion of what garret's role should be is just a straight up ambassador that relays messaged between other players and those in charge of the Zuma. He is the ambassador and if players can't use him to tell the Zuma stuff then the Zuma is even more flawed.

The way the Zuma attacked Terran over that forged letter was way to trigger happy especially coming from GM's.

But WHAT does the GM have to know the letter was forged? That is my question. When all you are getting are two copy and pasted messages from two different sources, then what metric do you have to decided which is true, remembering that the Zuma don't distinguish between advys and nobles, and care little for our power structures? And what is this talk about attacking right away? You guys were given time to sort things out, not much time I will agree but there were ways to extend those deadlines.

In terms of being an ambassador, what do the ambassadors in our realms do? Do all of them pass on letters exactly? Do they not attempt to use their role to their own advantage? Let me point it out again, Garret is not a GM character, the player is NOT part of the Dev Team. His character is his to play the way he wants. If he is failing in his duties then convince the Zuma of that IG and let them sort it out. A good place to start would be finding out from the Zuma what they think the role of ambassador means, it might be something quite different from what human realms think.

huh? you played the zuma gm who kept talking about fatmilaks and bols (with my character)? and then got nowhere and disappeared for a while (dropped out of the game?)

Was that Vates? Vates was the second GM who started later and then left. It was a pity because Vates had a lot of interaction with the players, didn't always make it clear that he was rather unique among the masters, and people are still basing much of their knowledge about the Zuma on Vates.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Something I'm wondering is where people got the idea that the Zuma were ever "honorable" or whatever. Garret became the speaker for the speaker (Vates, supposedly). You might not trust Garret (lol, why not? It's ironic too, especially since that very distrust has led some people to make decisions that put them in worse places than if they had actually trusted Garret completely and let him do everything for them. No one wants that though because they think Garret's untrustworthy. Could be..you know...something the daimons have picked up on and are using as well...)

The reason I say that is because some people seem to trust the other GM's words for some reason. Like, Vates is held in such high regard by people. I really question why though. Like, what made you think he was a "good guy"? >_>

[Vellos]

I agree. The problem is though, as already mentioned by others, long term retention. We have seen the problems caused by agreements that Vates apparently made with people but, as I knew nothing about them, can do nothing about them. It would be easy to get someone keen and eager to help out for a while. It's not so easy to ensure they will stay around and not just end up frustrating people by leaving things half done.

As has been noted by several people, most of this discussion is just going nowhere. As much as I would like to believe that debating most of the points with you further might ultimately lead to some reflections which might improve gameplay in the future, I just don't, not on this particular issue. So I am not going to make a detailed reply to most of your post; again, not out of angry frustration, but basically because I don't think it'll be productive

However, this comment can be productively dissected.

It begs the question: why do we even want long-term GMs? We don't need to have the same human player be ruler for 5 years IRL, why have the same GM?

Why not have, say, 4 or 5 GMs. They take shifts. 2 or 3 play at a time, for a few months. Then, they have to "return to the underworld" to rejuvenate themselves or something. Like, Dwilight's air is toxic or something. I dunno. Some kind of RPed hand-waving.

Thus, you could have less monolithic GMing, more diverse RPing, less burden on GMs, and solve the problem of inconsistent GMing.

What? Solve inconsistent GMing by introducing divisiveness among GMs? How?

Simple:
1. Don't let the GMs know each others' main accounts. So, for example, if Chénier and I are GMs, don't have it so that, if we send an OOC message, it says "Lyman Stone." Sure, we might figure it out... but maybe not.

2. When people realize that the GMs ARE IN FACT DIVIDED, it will alter the entire strategic framework for the parts of Dwilight affected by the Zuma. That is, the problem with inconsistent GMing is that GMs are generally expected to be consistent.

But what if we change the expectation? A plausible way to change that expectation while simultaneously fixing several other root problems with the Zuma would be to have a rotating pool of GMs with overlapping "terms" so they can kind of see what's going on with each other. The RP potential would also be awesome. "Ah, yes, it's the Era of Haktoo now... (3 months later)... ah, behold, fire from the volcano, the Era of Vates is beginning..." And, knowing that each Daimon has fairly consistent personalities, but that they might plausibly be played against each other, would help to add some of the dynamism the Zuma currently lack.

[fodder]

Was that Vates? Vates was the second GM who started later and then left. It was a pity because Vates had a lot of interaction with the players, didn't always make it clear that he was rather unique among the masters, and people are still basing much of their knowledge about the Zuma on Vates.

could be... it wasn't haktoo i don't think. something wandered down to madina but we couldn't get anywhere due to me attempting very hard not to say anything that might mean something bad for us.

[Perth]

But WHAT does the GM have to know the letter was forged? That is my question. When all you are getting are two copy and pasted messages from two different sources, then what metric do you have to decided which is true, remembering that the Zuma don't distinguish between advys and nobles, and care little for our power structures?

How about: The actions of GM forces of 10's of thousands of combat strength just shouldn't be predicated whatsoever upon ANY copy and pasted messages?

And what is this talk about attacking right away?

As in: Daimon units of 10,000 CS regularly SIT in regions BORDERING Terran regions. As in: when they decided to attack, they are literally IN our regions in 1 turn.

[De-Legro]

How about: The actions of GM forces of 10's of thousands of combat strength just shouldn't be predicated whatsoever upon ANY copy and pasted messages?

As in: Daimon units of 10,000 CS regularly SIT in regions BORDERING Terran regions. As in: when they decided to attack, they are literally IN our regions in 1 turn.

Yet time was given to sort things out BEFORE they decided to invade. Better then what we did in Solaria, where the first PeL really knew things were up was when out army started to move. Also from my understanding, the copy and pasted message was just a starting point. The result that eventuated came from what transpired after that event.

[De-Legro]

As has been noted by several people, most of this discussion is just going nowhere. As much as I would like to believe that debating most of the points with you further might ultimately lead to some reflections which might improve gameplay in the future, I just don't, not on this particular issue. So I am not going to make a detailed reply to most of your post; again, not out of angry frustration, but basically because I don't think it'll be productive

However, this comment can be productively dissected.

It begs the question: why do we even want long-term GMs? We don't need to have the same human player be ruler for 5 years IRL, why have the same GM?

Why not have, say, 4 or 5 GMs. They take shifts. 2 or 3 play at a time, for a few months. Then, they have to "return to the underworld" to rejuvenate themselves or something. Like, Dwilight's air is toxic or something. I dunno. Some kind of RPed hand-waving.

Thus, you could have less monolithic GMing, more diverse RPing, less burden on GMs, and solve the problem of inconsistent GMing.

What? Solve inconsistent GMing by introducing divisiveness among GMs? How?

Simple:
1. Don't let the GMs know each others' main accounts. So, for example, if Chénier and I are GMs, don't have it so that, if we send an OOC message, it says "Lyman Stone." Sure, we might figure it out... but maybe not.

2. When people realize that the GMs ARE IN FACT DIVIDED, it will alter the entire strategic framework for the parts of Dwilight affected by the Zuma. That is, the problem with inconsistent GMing is that GMs are generally expected to be consistent.

But what if we change the expectation? A plausible way to change that expectation while simultaneously fixing several other root problems with the Zuma would be to have a rotating pool of GMs with overlapping "terms" so they can kind of see what's going on with each other. The RP potential would also be awesome. "Ah, yes, it's the Era of Haktoo now... (3 months later)... ah, behold, fire from the volcano, the Era of Vates is beginning..." And, knowing that each Daimon has fairly consistent personalities, but that they might plausibly be played against each other, would help to add some of the dynamism the Zuma currently lack.

So long as some time was spent forumlating and recording a base for the new GM's to work from this could work. There is some division between the existing Zuma Masters, and yes it is contrived because the same player controls them all, but in my experiance he has done a reasonable job of keeping each Master true to the bio he set up from the start. I think most people have missed the factional stuff because there is so much focus on Garret and Haktoo.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Well Terran now gets to talk to Swift Claw. It's now up to them whether they get something from a daimon not named Haktoo, or blow it.

It's not impossible either. I believe that the new Barca ruler successfully talked to Screamer. And I am impressed. Garret is not keen on getting near Screamer, you see.

[Perth]

Garret is not keen on getting near Screamer, you see.

Maybe Garrett has a bit of sense left in him, after all.

*shudders*

[Dante Silverfire]

Maybe Garrett has a bit of sense left in him, after all.

*shudders*

Blasphemy.

[MaleMaldives]

Yet time was given to sort things out BEFORE they decided to invade. Better then what we did in Solaria, where the first PeL really knew things were up was when out army started to move. Also from my understanding, the copy and pasted message was just a starting point. The result that eventuated came from what transpired after that event.

This is false. My character was attacked twice in Vassar in the forged letter debacle. The first time they just rushed in and everyone in Terran was like what is going on? We were like Zuma what the hell is going on? Then the Zuma were like we got this letter and believe it to be true. Then everyone was like umm it is clearly fake Garret can see it is fake. They retreated temporally, but then did the bs we need verification crap and since the was dumb and took awhile they can back and killed my new army in Vassar. So I think you don't know about the first one that they did.

What ever reasons there are for the Zuma they are making the game not fun for the players in Terran(at least for me and a couple others). If fixing that means getting rid of them completely then so be, because what is the point of a GM run group that makes the games not fun for players. Or just make them less trigger happy and less strong(and since that takes time to fix just don't have them attack anyone).

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Can someone help me out here, because I don't think people have been listening to me the past...oh how many times I've said the following:

If you don't want the Zuma to attack you then shut up and don't get involved with them. Deny anything and everything, and make sure everyone knows you have nothing to do with the Zuma.

Would anyone who knows how to survive among daimons like to chip in and confirm that what I just said is in fact true?

[MaleMaldives]

Can someone help me out here, because I don't think people have been listening to me the past...oh how many times I've said the following:

If you don't want the Zuma to attack you then shut up and don't get involved with them. Deny anything and everything, and make sure everyone knows you have nothing to do with the Zuma.

Would anyone who knows how to survive among daimons like to chip in and confirm that what I just said is in fact true?

They attacked Terran because of the forged letter before they even said anything about it. Everyone in Terran was shocked and didn't know what was going on. So they don't give you a chance to deny stuff.

[Glaumring the Fox]

Can someone help me out here, because I don't think people have been listening to me the past...oh how many times I've said the following:

If you don't want the Zuma to attack you then shut up and don't get involved with them. Deny anything and everything, and make sure everyone knows you have nothing to do with the Zuma.

Would anyone who knows how to survive among daimons like to chip in and confirm that what I just said is in fact true?

We dont want to bother the Zuma, thats why we made Peace with them. We were happy with live and let live. Then we lost land to the Zuma, asked for its return, was told to shut up, and have basically been living in fear that the Zuma are going to come stomp the rest of our kingdom for some lame reason. We worked hard to build our kingdom, the Zuma probably not so much with their 35000cs army.