[Poll] Local or inter-ducal RP focus?

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Should RP focus on Local or Inter-ducal politics?

Poll ended at Sat Mar 21, 2020 6:35 pm

Build out the other duchies capital cities
7
30%
Focus on local duchies only
3
13%
No change please
13
57%
Other - comments below
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 23
SilverMoon
Posts: 21
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2016 12:58 pm

Sat Mar 07, 2020 8:01 pm

Oh my goodness yes!
I would love that.
That would add so much to the game as a whole! I cannot say yes loud enough! Especially if we made it realistic for people to travel to the other duchies. I love it! Especially because it's always been that the other duchies exist, but it's like they don't really actually physically exist. and people can role play about going to tubor, or vandago, or where ever, but you can't actually do that, unless you went off grid.
I'm so fired up about this idea. sorry, that's just my two cents though.

Sparkles
Posts: 108
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2019 3:52 pm

Sat Mar 07, 2020 8:06 pm

I also admit that I have the serious wonder if "then I'll just run off and live in Tubor" wouldn't become a new trend given certain things.

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galaxgal
Posts: 209
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:32 pm

Sat Mar 07, 2020 8:35 pm

TI's grid is very large, and the player density there is already fairly small. Coupled with the long travel times to move around that grid in-game, it can already give the feeling that the world is very large and somewhat barren.

While I would enjoy a tiny handful of rooms more fleshed out than 'traveling outside of Lithmore,' I feel keeping the focus of the game tightly on people and events in Lithmore and affecting Lithmore is best. And, if I were asked to choose between building efforts dedicated to other duchies or cities vs. Lithmore city and its surroundings, I would rather see the existing grid fleshed out with more things like default moods, NPC's or beasties to interact with, etc. Everything that happens, even in other duchies, does so in the context of how it affects Lithmore - and that's good for story focus.

I do agree that some guilds with supposedly inter-ducal roles, like the Troubs and Merchants, sometimes feel like their role in affairs is superficial. However, I think this issue is addressed instead by giving them on-grid benefits or access that feel more meaningful and real, rather than expansion efforts that may fragment the pbase more.
Around sometimes. Contact: galaxgal#6174

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Kuzco
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2016 2:12 am

Sat Mar 07, 2020 8:38 pm

Agreed with Sparkles, Kitty and Galax. Every time I've seen a game expand it's size without the population to back it up, RP dilutes. Opening new areas for special events like a ST or a staff run plot is novel and nice, but making it permanent will simply drain a game which took a sizable pbase blow last year.
I vote against.

Dreams
Posts: 168
Joined: Sun Dec 30, 2018 4:29 pm
Discord Handle: dreams2410

Sat Mar 07, 2020 8:59 pm

As for the roles Galax mentions that are supposed to cover all five duchies (Prime Medicus, Troubadours, Merchants, etc.), as I have held at least one of those, it did feel rather... like I was only running the one in Lithmore, rather than all of them.
help policy triggers, help policy non-consensual, help sandwich

Deedee
Posts: 119
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2020 5:56 pm

Sat Mar 07, 2020 9:05 pm

Kitty wrote:
Sat Mar 07, 2020 8:59 pm
As for the roles Galax mentions that are supposed to cover all five duchies (Prime Medicus, Troubadours, Merchants, etc.), as I have held at least one of those, it did feel rather... like I was only running the one in Lithmore, rather than all of them.
Yeah, especially easy to fall into if you don't have a second GL who steps up to the role as the local leader. I'm trying to treat my role as controlling the guild of the kingdom, but find myself having to be a lot more proactive in local stuff for the moment. Hoping he'll be back soon!

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Satoshi
Posts: 39
Joined: Tue May 14, 2019 4:08 pm

Sat Mar 07, 2020 9:43 pm

I have a lot of issues with this proposal. The short answer is that I think making the grid larger would be a LOT of work, for what would, in my opinion, negatively impact the game, break immersion, de-centralize RP, and poorly fill the place of a system we already have in place (via the travel room). Not to mention just the novelty would have an instant impact on the playerbase--everyone would want to travel to these new places, whether or not they had an IC reason to, and then, what? Now that they've seen it they go back and it sits in the closet collecting dust until it's forgotten? People switch to permanently reside there, cutting them completely off from other RP unless you break immersion further?

The addition of a larger grid doesn't really take into account the travel time between Lithmore and other duchies. Unless staff forced players to log out of their characters for the (sometimes considerable) travel between duchies before getting back into play, it's going to handwave what could be MONTHS of IC travel. Other games have massive continents and cities. Do you know what THEY end up having? Huge, unexplored wastes, that you can cross within a few IRL minutes, spanning what would in lore be weeks or months of travel with a simple script. That breaks immersion, and in a Roleplay Intensive game like TI, immersion is incredibly important. I understand that there's some time-smudging currently going on, but with the travel-for-special-scenes and travel-while-doing-plots, plots that you have to WAIT for, which does cause IC time to pass, it's less disruptive to play. Unless this was a special-occasion-only like current travelling--and if it was, why bother with all this effort, because the current system with the travel room works just as well--it would play fast and loose with these travel times.

In addition, the addition of a larger grid itself would de-centralize RP. Already we have issues with players being unavailable just in the grid. I have maps so big that I had to cut them apart so my mapping program could load them, from literal weeks of exploring the game and searching for secrets (which I found). I still haven't finished mapping the game, and I've been playing for a year! And just think about how the addition of large, even to-scale cities from other duchies would impact finding RP. You'd have to TRAVEL there to get it (see above) in the first place. And unless you can just teleport between cities, that means you could be stuck with ZERO RP because everyone else either has RP off, is tucked away, you can't find them, or they're now in A WHOLE DIFFERENT CITY!!! We already have new players commenting that it's difficult to get established and get into RP. How many more would just quit because they couldn't find RP?

On top of de-centralizing RP, you now have the problem of lore, and macro-scale between duchies in the kingdom. These cities all have their own Guild branches. Each with their own leaders. Each city has it's own vNPC leader and nobles. Powers that are, allegedly, affecting the game world in their own little power struggles. Staff would have to at least think about what sort of machinations are going on--or else these are just completely empty, dead stages. We barely have enough nobles and players to populate Lithmore and make it feel alive, at times, without IC events and moods that we are responsible for placing in the game-world. Large grids would have to be lore-compliant, and either be injected with life by staff, take a ton of extra work by players to reflect events going on in a whole new duchy, or else... be a massive waste of time to just be empty streets with nothing going on.

There's more I could say, but while the idea of travelling somewhere else sounds NEAT, the implementation would hurt the game, in my opinion, not to mention take staff's attention for little to negative gain. Staff has consistently veto'd ideas that were equally 'neat' but would take a lot of staff work to implement and I really don't think this would help the game.

Not to mention that from my understanding, the issue with GL positions affecting the Kingdom usually causes dissatisfaction from plot-results not reflecting the alleged power that GLs have, or from IC expectations for a GL to affect something on a kingdom-wide scale when they actually don't have the IC ability to do that other than with plots. Adding in 2-3x the grid wouldn't fix that, it would just cause more issues.

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Taunya
Posts: 561
Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2016 3:08 am

Sat Mar 07, 2020 10:20 pm

I'll just state I think it would be a great alternative to travel rooms, and make for great settings for events and STs as well.
If staff builders are willing to spend the effort, I'm in full support of it.
I would not consider it a high priority, however, and do not think the overall focus of the game should change. I think they should be used as off-grid rooms and areas presently are.

Existing polices for travel can remain in effect if they're implemented, for reference:

                            Helpfile for Traveling

Roleplay occasionally needs to take place in locales outside of Lithmore
City proper.  In order to facilitate this, the staff has several Traveling
rooms outfitted with OOC conveniences (such as couriers and baths).  You
can use these rooms to represent other places, whether other cities in the
duchy of Lithmore or other duchies as well.

To RP a trip outside of Lithmore, please post a Request board note to the
staff detailing who is going where.  We'll transfer you to a Traveling room
which you can roleplay in to your heart's content.

If your PC wishes to go to the Springs, a similar procedure can be used.
The Springs do exist as a coded area, but are not accessible via the grid.
With a Request board note, staff will transfer you there.  Please note the
Springs are a long way away ICly, and would probably require around a
week's journey to reach.

(Subject area: policy                 Last modified: Mon May  2 09:20:17 2016)

As the helpfile mentions, there's already precedence for travel to off-grid zones, such as taking a pilgrimage to the springs.

Pros:
Things to explore
Chance for random RP encounters when off-grid, which would be unbalanced in a travel room with no means to escape
Could lead to more consistent views between characters of the nature of a city. Characters who never met before could know and talk about the same locations and details there.
Ready-built areas for storytellers would be very welcome

Cons:
A lot of work
More to maintain
increase in system resource use
The zones would likely see little use, after the novelty wears off

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Taunya
Posts: 561
Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2016 3:08 am

Sat Mar 07, 2020 10:45 pm

As a note in the opposite direction:

If we want to actually shrink the scale of things, the kingdom could break apart. The other races would remain playable choices, but the duchies would be their own kingdoms following a civil war, and travel between them would be more restricted than present.

Existing foreign nobles would no longer have any authority, outside of the respect afforded a visiting dignitary.

Edit: Oh, and maybe a Charali uprising overthrows Vavard, and they all flee back to Lithmore. They can be landless nobles in that case. ;)

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Mallin
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Jan 04, 2020 5:19 pm

Sun Mar 08, 2020 9:21 am

Much as I think that it'd be cool if we had the other cities/duchies built and playable... I don't think there are enough players to support more than a single other Lithmore City sized location, if that.
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