This thread is for character management.

Character Rules

1. When a character is created the player decides what caste it will be (see Nobility section for a list of castes). Each player may only create one character at a time that is of high gentry or better birth. A single player may have more than 1 upper caste character if their lower caste characters rise in position). Not all castes will be available at all times as government styles, technology, etc modify what is available. There is a maximum percentage of noble characters to non-noble characters so creation of a noble may be disallowed based on current numbers.

2. Each character has a life expectancy equal to that shown in the current save of the demogame. Each game turn is considered one year in the RPG for character age. A character will die of old age at the life expectancy plus/minus 10%.

3. Character statistics are the innate traits of the character. These are determined by a combination of assignment and random contribution.

4. Character abilities are the learned skills of the character. These are determined by the player.

5. Characters may only have a maximum of 10 descendants (to keep it simple), however, there are risks (see events). The firstborn automatically gains a 'birthright' (The firstborn will get all of the inheritence), which lasts until Nationalism, but could continue under a Monarchy. Code of Laws allow for wills. Family Crests can be made with Fuedalism.

6. Each character will have 2 distinct traits (see traits), which can be passed on from generation to generation.

7. The Character Manager has overall authority over all things character related. He can add/remove/modify as he feels appropriate in order to prevent unbalanced or game threatening characters.

I'm also proposing to add this rule:

- Character stats may be lowered due to age or certain events. (just to clarify)

Shouldn't the attribute Strength be added to the character stats? It is quite possible to be quite healthy (constitution) without being strong, and vice versa.

Ok, I could add that. BTW, my D&D experience is limited... :) I'm not a master at it.

Originally posted by Chieftess
Ok, I could add that. BTW, my D&D experience is limited... :) I'm not a master at it.

My D&D and RPG experience is actually quite extensive. I have been playing longer than some of our citizens have been alive. ;)

Anyway, it might also be interesting to allow a player's character (or the family of that character) to hold whatever position that player currently holds in the demogame.

Also, some progression of attributes over the course of one's lifespan is to be expected. Physical attributes should increase slightly up until middle age, and then decrease at about twice that rate after middle age. Mental attributes should increase at a steady pace until the character dies.

A system of bonuses to aid random number contests or actions should also be implemented. The easiest way is to have the average range for a score give no bonus (maybe 8=12), while scores lower or higher would give a bonus, and those less than average give a penalty. This will make everything much easier in the future...this is the reason almost all RPGs use a system similar to this. For example, if two characters fight, the conflict could easily be resolve by generating a random number between one and ten for each character and then adding the strength and agility bonuses for each character. The difference between the two results is the amount of damage taken by the loser of that 'round', which is then temporarily subtracted from the losing character's constitution. Whoever reaches 0 constitution first is disabled and at the mercy of the other character. This system can be applied to almost any situation.

just a sidenote: we should hold a caste-asignment discussion in padma's office. at the moment anyone can assign his characters any position... which is bad :-)

ah, and on topic: i second eyreis proposal. we could also implement this set for units. they could be formed by characters, and a conflict will then be defined by gathering characters around you to form an army and let the characters fight. i proposed this in the conflict-office, and i think this will not only allow us revolutions against the despot without owning land, but also will allow for the proletarians to raise up and other effects :-)
characters with a good charisma will tend to be able to gather people around them easily and thus form huge loyal armies... people with less charisma will have to force people into their armies or buy them :-)

And now a forum related rule. ;)

- Should any player be banned for 3 days or longer, their characters will be 'killed off' so that they do not delay the storylines of other players.

We could though send that character to prison for that time. This way he wont interfere also :-)

Another rule:

Characters can marry to an NPC to have children. However, the traits of the NPC will be completely random and up to the Character Manager.

When your character gives birth, pm the Character Manager about the birth and the parents. (include traits and stats).

Just a thought: due to the fact that time in the Demogame passes too quickly for the RPG to catch up to it (13 years), I suggest that we simply have the base lifespan be two weeks, with an extra day for each caste. Sound good?

I like that better than the original, Noldodan. I was wondering, can players kill NPC's without the Game Manager's permission?

I like Noldodan's suggestion.

I too. It's hard enough to know who every character is, not needing to learn 10 new characters after every turnchat!

Perhaps a 3 chat minimum lifespan? Noldodan's suggestion will actually reduce lifespan later in the game.

3 chat minimum lifespan sounds good to me. But I think the maximum should'nt be lower than two weeks.

How about a half year? But, once we get granaries (perhaps the next thing in the queue?), the lifespan will be higher.

What if we did a half year to start and a full year as soon as the turnchats begin slowing down?

Haec credam a deo pio? A deo iusto, a deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem. Tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui. Officium perfeci. Cruciatus in crucem. Eas in crucem.

Whyd did every one of my characters die? Wouldnt the law of averages leave at least one or two alive? And come on! One was pregnant. Oh! Loophole... What turn did the deaths occur? If it was turn 2, I get to keep the kid.

Chieftess and others. How would I go about (please describe the process completely) having some of my characters marry and reproduce? And does it have to be an NPC? And Nicoro died, is it possible that though I hadn't done anything before hand, I would know allow him to reproduce. I had orignially wanted 3 lineages, but now I'm not sure.

Yeah.... We HAVE to change the death thing. 3 chats should be enough. About 10 days I believe.

I say a half year, so no one dies as quickly.

yea.. I agree with the half a year thing. When we get to it being run by years, we can go to years.

It is rather annoying that more than half of the characters died within two chats. This needs to be slowed down.

Also remember that Shaitan did play 13 turns, and nearly went the full 20. Also, the normal lifespan in industrial ages is about 60-80.

At best (a tech every 4 turns - almost like in DG1), that's 15-20 techs - about one full era. Quite realistic. Looking at the civ3 industrial age and comparing it to real life, we get:

Industrialization - 1880s
Motorized Transport - 1940s

That's 60 years. It's quite possible for someone to have been born at the start (Nationalism - 1850s/1860s) and died at the end of the Industrial era (late 1940s/early 1950s). Although it's rare.

With a 1/2 year per turn, it turns into 120-160 turns - or about 30-40 techs. That's then entire Industrial, Modern and parts of the late middle ages.

You also have to remember that in the very ancient era, people were exposed to the elements a lot more than us, not to mention in lots of wars.

Heat, cold, wars, famines.

Living conditions weren't prime for commoners. Upper class didn't have such a violent lifestyle (though were still at risk from invading armies or raids). However, we could experiment with the 1/2 year rule in the ancient age only. But, remember, once we get granaries, the average lifespan WILL jump to 30-40. I think having 1/2 of your cities with granaries garuntees a 40 year lifespan.

Sounds good, just leav the lifespand at late twenties, early 30's for now.

I am confused about whether my character, Cuchulain, is alive or dead. He apparently died during one 'event', but then he got sick in the next one.

one request:
could we have a tc'ly excel spreadsheet with all the characters and all info we need about them? (player, parents, children for example if not items they own)

and one proposal:
afaik, if we create children we have limited influence on the stats, which is good.
but i think that random stats should also be applied to all created characters on top of the set stats (a random variation of +-10% for example). or maybe only the traits should be decided by the player and they give the random distribution for the stats.
(each trait could raise the propability for specific stats to be higher than normal and decreases the propability for other stats)

also, the final stats for a character should be kept SECRET by the character manager. nobody should know the exact stats of his character... we got to learn them during roleplay... like in rl.
the only thing the cm should post when a character is created is some vague pointing to the characters "highlights", like "a new baby anthony nobody is born. it seem this baby is very powerful" which would mean his top stat is strength.
this could apply to any new character, but should definitely be applied to "children" of characters.


with the tech of genetics, thos mysteries of the character stats could be lifted and the detailed stats posted.

one request: can you PLEASE just run the child program to give me my characters, If not, Ill do it myself and just give them the traits I want.

ct: i would like to see an excel spreadsheet with the characters and their ages as well as their players on top of this thread after each TC :-) that would be really nice to not loose the overview...


AND A HINT:
our character naming is completely out of scope for the romans :-)
here are some links to determine how characters were named in reality:
http://www.legionxxiv.org/
http://romanhistorybooksandmore.freeservers.com/l_rrr.htm

but there are many more.
the primary thing there is that roman names consisted of 3 parts:
the first part was inherited from the father (the first part of the fathers name)
the second the family name (so also inherited from the father)
the thrid was a kind of descriptive name or calling name

so Julius, Gaius Maximus
would have inherited Julius, Gaius from his father and Maximus would escribe him, for example "the big one"
if he was a she, the -us would have been replaced by -a or -ia
so she would have been called:
Julia, Gaius Maximus

For the details and examples see the above 2 links and many more on the internet.

Maybe we could start to enforce authentic character naming.
We could bind the freedom to decide the name with some tech, like democracy.

ah and one other thing:
slaves had only one name. this was given them by their "owner". if freed, they would adopt the first 2 name parts of their owner as their full name.
a slave "hannibal" of our Julius, Gaius Maximus would have called himself Julius, Gaius Hannibal after he was freed.

naming of women was even stranger, but read it yourself :-)

hellena d'Atrou's name was changed to reflect our romanism a bit better and because she is married:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=954637#post954637

the new name is Caia Lifespanius Helena

also note the title of princess.

note also that she is now married to Diutius Lifespanius and that she will be receiving a child next TC (hopefully)

I am wondering about the random events as we have had an overwhelming amount of bad and neutral events, but only one good event. Also, I find it weird that two out of the three chcaracters killed off by the tornado were mine.

The beccino's should be receiving a child someday :-)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=954637#post954637

they need a heir to run the graveyard...

people, slow down. CT will answer when she gets the chance.

suggestion: I suggest that for simplicity there should be only one family per player... The player cannot start another family before he looses controll over his family or they die out...

...or he gives them up and converts them to NPC-players controlled by the game management.
also there should be no unroleplayed transfer of any ownership or title between families of the same player...

I totally and completely disagree. No character should have a family. Have CHARACTERS! Not Cardboardicus Cutoutia the Seventh. Create characters to make stories. Have different players with characters in the same families. Have characters that aren't in any family. Myself, I can't tell any of the current crop from one another. None of them have any interesting characteristics or anything that would make me sympathetic to them or interested in knowing anything about them. None of them do anything except make babies and try to get land. It's too boring to bother even trying to keep up with it.

the main problem is the fast pace. nothing else

Julius: My heir will be Fabian, my daughter. This has been changed from Julia.

just a tip for the character-management:
disallow editing of the character index. the index should only contain the birth-year, not the age! this would make it easy for you to determine the age of characters ;-)

and maybe a 1 post per character index would be easier for you to "catch" new characters and keep track of old ones... ;-)

ct, we urgently need a character list!!!
with age and maybe the stats. i dont even know if my characters are still alive :-(

ABSENCE:
ruling posted:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1042621#post1042621

stuck is controlling my characters during my absence.