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Post by genocide on Jul 19, 2018 14:14:05 GMT -5
Also, just thought of this as an alternative to stat-brackets and random rolls:
Give the player a choice of three areas to make selection; A major area of expertise, like combat, thus raising the WAR or LEA cap to 90 or what ever, then two areas of lesser expertise, making the caps slightly lower in each one say 75 and 60 respectively. While the last two stats can have whatever points remain distributed amongst them.
Or what about this:
A random roll determining the maximum stat pool number, say 328, and then you have the areas of expertise.
You can play with the numbers all you want.
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Post by samuraigaiden on Jul 19, 2018 16:17:03 GMT -5
I think I'm finally caught up enough with my RPs to read through these now.
Okay, so my opinions...
To be fair, you were given like 800+ exp to help you keep up with the rest of the players since you joined so late. So your stats were a little higher than all of ours when we first started the game.
That being said, I do agree that character progression and statting is a little to kind here.
Here's my proposal for that: 1. Make a sliding scale for stats at sign-up. 1-50 is 1 PTD per point; 51-65 is 2 PTD per point, 66-75 is 3 PTD per point, 75-90 is 4 PTD per point. Stat max is 90.
2. Have randomized critical failures for low stats. For instance have a random roll each turn in a person's PT for the following effects: Lead under 20 - Randomly have the character upset troops in the region and either get beat up, have to pay remittance to them, or have them quit the army in protest. War under 20 - Randomly have the character get sick or injured just going about their daily business. Int under 20 - Randomly have one of the player's actions replaced by a different action, because the character got confused about what they wanted to do. Pol under 20 - Randomly lose money, because the character makes a financial mistake (overpays rent or something). Cha under 20 - Randomly annoy an NPC in your PT.
3. Barring one or either of those, you can also enforce a stat minimum. For instance every character starts with a stat line of 20-20-20-20-20 and then gets 225 PTD to work with (instead of starting with 0 and having 325 as we have now).
Addendum: Another point to consider - we could go a 'book smarts' vs. 'street smarts' kind of way and eliminate SP in the sign up. Instead up the players' PTD at start, maybe from 325 to 350 or 375. And then have PTD go into both stats and skills. Your stats represent your 'book smarts' how capable of things you are on paper; while PTD would also be used to take skills which would represent your 'street smarts - i.e. how capable you are in practice. Someone with 100 Lead would be good at commanding troops, they've read all the books and practiced all the commands, but they've never led a proper charge under fire. Meanwhile someone with 80 Lead and the Charge skill would have read several treatises, perhaps, and studied the warfare of the day and he's also run up a hill with a spear in hand a few times so he knows how to lead a charge. Either of these characters are viable and important, neither is really better than the other except for how the player wants to play them.
tl;dr - Get rid of SP, make all the skills have a PTD value to them, and make people choose whether they want lots of high stats or lots of skills.
The issue with limited NPCs is that a ruler who doesn't have a lot of friends playing the game, i.e. someone to create a PC and join them, runs the risk of getting steamrolled by the most popular ruler.
One thing that could go along with this, and still work, is by giving a ruler a 'Hatamoto' of sorts (or Gokenin if we want a more timely term, perhaps?). Only Hatamoto can be given control of a province or domain. A ruler's rank or, some other designated feature, would control how many Hatamoto a player could have.
A player could still, ostensibly, put a non-Hatamoto character in charge of a domain, but that would prevent them from submitting a turn for that domain - only Hatamoto run domains can be personally controlled by the ruler in their turns. Likewise, only domains with a Hatamoto character can be taxed. Non-Hatamoto characters basically just stand there holding your flag so you can say "I own that place!"
Tying into the Hatamoto system I started on the last point: Each ruler would have a set number of Hatamoto, only Hatamoto or ruler-controlled areas can produce income. So if a ruler gets too much territory, what they can do is prop up a puppet ruler: I.e. put a PC on the throne in one of their domains. That PC then gathers the income from their domain(s) is ostensibly as autonomous as their overlord wants them to be, or as autonomous as they weasel. This creates more political intrigue, as well, because a PC can easily raise a rebellion by either defecting to an angry vassal or being a vassal. Imagine if Katerina moved her capital to York and made the Iona the Earl of Northumbria, because Iona's a good PC and Northumbria's stats are pretty well maxed out so it generates good income. Iona then becomes power hungry or upset - well she's got a whole province and/or army of her own and is behind Katerina's capital compared to the front line. If my entire army's in East Anglia, save for a token force of about 100 soldiers to stop pillagers, and Iona attacks with 400 troops...suddenly Katerina is in trouble. In this scenario, let's say Iona wins, but Katerina escapes. Now we have a war between Iona and Katerina - and Iona controls the first and second most productive regions of Katerina's original empire.
So that would give rulers a choice when giving up territory to their vassals: Give them recently conquered territory that's on the front and less productive, but closer to what would be friends to a rebel; or give them productive regions in the rear. Likewise rulers could determine tributes to be paid to them, etc.
I think Titania summed up everything I could say on that matter: With only one administrator running everything, the more extra-curricular things to give the game flavor; the less work is getting done behind the scenes. If you add in a new quest, suddenly the PT rolls are going to take longer because you have to keep up with the quest.
With more GMs and the like the game can run more efficiently. But, that being said, more GMs require more players - otherwise you eventually become a bunch of dungeon masters sitting behind your curtains staring at each other, waiting for an unlucky soul to pop in to see who can ruin their lives the quickest. Or maybe I'm just a sadist. =D
Those are my thoughts for now, at least.
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Post by genocide on Jul 19, 2018 16:52:38 GMT -5
I like the Hatamoto idea, a title system for rulers based on territory controlled could also be used to determine how many people they can have as retainers as well, I would say. So that way, the factions can have their PC populations somewhat balanced. I know that this may be an unpopular idea, but just standing by as ten PCs flock to a banner, for whatever their reasons is going to put people off, and then we run into the issue Titania raised about rulers or others in important positions leaving the site.
Like I was saying as long as you aren't being shit on in game, people tend to stay around. But where you see the most shitting on isn't late game, it's early game. So having some sort of scheme to balance the population of the factions, at least early on, is definitely something I would recommend implementing.
Perhaps allowing more than 3 player factions could be an option? Or having some NPC factions that players can join would be an option worth having as well?
Now, as far as I understand, from your post Samuraigaiden:
1. Hatamoto could be either PC or NPC? 2. Hatamoto is restricted by a title, or ranking system, based on territory controlled? 3. Only a Hatamoto-designated retainer can generate income from a province controlled by the same ruler? 4. The ruler runs the Hatamoto as they see fit? 5. The PC Hatamoto is as loyal as they are well-treated?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2018 16:53:09 GMT -5
Sorry. I'm working and using talk to text for the first time. Let's see how it goes.
I wasn't referring to my own stats since I made my character kind of balanced. but I was referring to other stats as in pretty much every character that's ever been made in the game that had almost 90 to 95 points in each of their top 3 or bottom stats. I feel like as you start making a character or as a new character you should not be able to reach the Pinnacle of your stats. maxing out any stat in the beginning because then it leaves you with nothing to achieve going forward in the game. So I think overall the starting stats that characters make should be lower. maybe a Max of 70 or 80 and that's neglecting majority of your stats. but that's just my opinion.
on the topic of NPCs maybe what we can do is have a system where depending on your Province or territory you can only have a certain amount of fiefdoms and each fiefdom can be designated to a PC or an NPC. so then what you have is effectively a cap of officers depending on your territory size. so the issue with having friends join your kingdom and overpowering somebody else won't be such an issue due to the fact that effectively they will have the same amount or relatively the same amount of officers. This will also make the ruler have to choose between an NPC and a player and if a player goes inactive they can then choose to disregard the player and choose an NPC therefore no kingdom is absolutely being chocked full of overpowered characters at any point in time.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2018 18:15:39 GMT -5
I know I'm about to make a lot of enemies saying this out loud but perhaps we should not do the Onin era of Japan. Considering this is a new sim forum and the onin era is not the most popular period of Japan. Then maybe we should pick an era and location that is more popular in order to gain a bigger following for the site before we do something like the onin period. People know about the Sengoku period a lot more than the Onin era. Mainly because of Tokugawa and Oda Nobunaga.
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Post by genocide on Jul 20, 2018 8:27:20 GMT -5
Well, if we do Sengoku, what are the details of your proposal? We sort of loosely have Onin war worked out, but it would be easier to work out a Sengoku era RP. Details man, details!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2018 8:54:01 GMT -5
Well I'm not saying the Sengoku period specifically. Though because of video games, movies and cartoons it is more well known then the onin period. As well the idea of guns turns me off. It kills the idea of warfare for me. But I would play it regardless. I'm just talking about marketing more. When pushing a new or untried product, you make it familer, friendly. Something recognizable. The last thing you want in sim gaming is to make your players feel stupid. If you choose a time people don't know about or a place they never heard of.. then You get some weird shit. Like a German knight in han dynasty China. Just an example. Then when the ridicule starts they leave. I'm just suggesting that for a new sim forum trying to find and make it's player base. An era and place more recognizable and "popular" would be a better more marketable route. 1066 was a good idea for the first round. You got your feet wet. Had some traffic. But not many keepers. But that was due to lack of staff and some testing issues. So round two should be polishing. Staffing and rule tweaking. I would suggest 1066 again or maybe even 866 and let the players play out the Viking invasion of England. We could even do the houndred year war. Three kingdomes is always popular ect. I'm just suggesting something along those lines. It's about polishing the things that went wrong and keeping a base now. There is not much competition out there sim wise. The player base is small to begin with. So you need to treat player activity as a must if you want any version to survive and be enjoyable.
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Post by genocide on Jul 20, 2018 9:12:40 GMT -5
Agreed totally. By the way, I've got a discord server up, there is a thread in the general chat board. I've been adding things to it and have a channel set up for discussion on future versions of the game, among other things.
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Post by samuraigaiden on Jul 20, 2018 9:36:04 GMT -5
Two issues with a Sengoku period setting: 1. There's a lot more records of people, so players would expect more real NPCs and not just random-generated ones. This would require a lot more staff set up and work to get a bunch of NPCs statted and keep a list of who is found/taken, etc. each turn. 2. People tend to gravitate toward the big names: Nobunaga, Ieyasu, Shingen, etc. That can make a story line a little lopsided, particularly if you have a small cast of players - which we do.
Also, we're still in kind of a developmental phase here, I feel - we're testing a lot of new things out with the new game; so an off-the-wall setting might not be a bad thing. I mean, that's what got me to come here: I'd at one point thought of making a sim set around the Norman conquest with William failing and 'what would have happened?' But I never had the time to devote to it. So when NB made this I was all in.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2018 11:02:52 GMT -5
Not sure if this will come off wrong, if so no offense meant. But you proved my point. As I said before, the Sengoku period was just an example and not my real suggestion. I would prefer something like 1066 to be honest. But as you said, you joind because of the setting. A lot of people know 1066 and even earlier. Because of Total war games as well as other movies and such. The time is well known. As well vikings are in. I know that sounds stupid but it's true. The show vikings, video games, movies even shows on Netflix. Vikings are everywhere. So an setting with them in it at all will draw people. It's just plain old marketing. An unknown or least known time like the onin era is choppy. It may work out but it's a gamble. I'm just throwing my two cents out there.
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Post by Titania on Jul 20, 2018 11:13:51 GMT -5
How about this then. Why don't we put the Onin setting on hold, saving it for v3, and do the Viking invasion of England (866)? It would be a more familiar map and similar setting to test the changes and additions, while still being different enough to change things up a bit. The NPC "kingdom" could be the invading Vikings, and any PC rulers can choose their starting province in England. Goal of the game is to prevent the Vikings from rolling through and conquering England, beyond that the players themselves can decide whether they want to try to unite England or settle back into their original places. I'm sure we'll have a least one player that wants to unify England. Note that the NPC kingdom will be a completely legitimate group to join as a mercenary or individual player, and perhaps work your way through the ranks and be the new head of the Viking invasion.
What are everyone's thoughts on this?
After that, we can return back to the Onin War setting for V3, having polished mechanics and built a better base, and go from there?
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Post by genocide on Jul 20, 2018 11:23:11 GMT -5
It's fine with me, as long as the site is active somewhat.
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Post by Titania on Jul 20, 2018 11:29:49 GMT -5
I guess does anyone have a way to contact the others who had joined, and invite them back? Phailak, KDS, anoriand, Krim, Brennan, etc? We can explain what we've been working on and see if they're willing to give it another go?
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Post by genocide on Jul 20, 2018 11:56:46 GMT -5
I'm in another discord with most of them right now, I could canvas there to see if people are willing to come back for v2. They are mostly on another sim game called Warlords, run by Phailak, but they are also between versions and are developing the next iteration of their sim at the moment.
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Post by Titania on Jul 20, 2018 11:57:47 GMT -5
Alright, well, if they're interested it would be great to have them back.
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