New NESes, ideas, development, etc
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SKILORD
Insurgent
I don't know if cliche plots are the way to go, especially ones with such strictly predetermined morality.
I mean, cliche settings, yes, but cliche plots I would avoid. Because then it seems like it would be harder to innovate on it and explore the various structures of their moral guidelines as they impact the real world with variable outcomes.
I mean, cliche settings, yes, but cliche plots I would avoid. Because then it seems like it would be harder to innovate on it and explore the various structures of their moral guidelines as they impact the real world with variable outcomes.
Starlife
de la terre à la lune
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Indeed, while the setting is cliche (setting = initial plot?), the plots that develop would not be. Also, the morality is not so predetermined. Like I said, I am avoiding "alignments". The Dimkind would basically be born with one type of magic in their blood, the Lightfolk another. The whole premise is that the players are the absolute last powerful members of their bloodline. A Lightfolk could easily kill some people and be completely evil. The difference between Lightfolk and Dimkind is that Lightfolk are for the preservation of the world, whereas the Dimkind are not.
"Lightfolk" refers to those who inhabited the world before the Dimkind. That is all. They could be criminals, they could be former dictators, etc. But they are still human-humans. They don't have to be white knights or morally outstanding citizens. The Dimkind are also humans, but their blood has a different sort of magic, one that makes them easily controlled.
Dimkind represent sheer destruction and a complete annihilation of the universe. It is what they are driven to do. Playing as them would be far more redundant than playing as the last of a certain group of people, which would be the whole point in such a centralized plotline. Playing as the Dimkind thus makes little sense to me.
EDIT: Think of the Dimkind as the fantasy version of the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Except that instead of collective consciousness, their entire bloodline is controlled by a single unknown entity. So they have no free will, and thus would not be good to play.
"Lightfolk" refers to those who inhabited the world before the Dimkind. That is all. They could be criminals, they could be former dictators, etc. But they are still human-humans. They don't have to be white knights or morally outstanding citizens. The Dimkind are also humans, but their blood has a different sort of magic, one that makes them easily controlled.
Dimkind represent sheer destruction and a complete annihilation of the universe. It is what they are driven to do. Playing as them would be far more redundant than playing as the last of a certain group of people, which would be the whole point in such a centralized plotline. Playing as the Dimkind thus makes little sense to me.
EDIT: Think of the Dimkind as the fantasy version of the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Except that instead of collective consciousness, their entire bloodline is controlled by a single unknown entity. So they have no free will, and thus would not be good to play.
Actually, I wrote about it for a couple of alternate histories. Butterflies made Maximilian I, formerly of Mexico, the solution to the problem of king, having loltacular impacts on the 1870s.
Not that I was trying to start an argument over who's got a bigger history dick or something. No need to get defensive. It wasn't as though I assaulted the believability of the TL in general, although I very well might have.
Right, whatever. Actual NES development topic:
Some people here may know about the "prestige" concept that I introduced in DaNES II and that Perfectionist has lifted for the current PerfNES. It's basically an attempt to tie roleplaying and competitive playing together by linking the "winner" of the game (i.e. the person who accumulates the most prestige) to actions that are either good for roleplaying (you get prestige for doing things that make you look like a competent, realistic ruler, like constructing temples and churches, patronizing the Arts, and so on) or good for competitive play (winning battles and wars, signing important treaties, successfully carrying out significant reforms, that sort of thing).
After all, different NESers are in the game for different reasons. Some people want to win and play competitively (insofar as you can actually do that with the hilariously un-level playing field of a NES), some people are interested creating an interesting story, some people just want to roleplay for the sake of roleplaying, etc. Prestige is supposed to reward those actions and create a viable basis for the "winner" of the NES other than "whoever's strongest at the end", which I think is a very unsatisfying answer, or "whoever the mod ended up liking the best".
The problem is that prestige doesn't really reward majestic failures, screwing up for the sake of screwing up and making an interesting story. Hitler's Germany or Napoleon's France (or Ranavalona's Merinas) undeniably made the history of their times incredibly interesting, but they'd never end up with anything to show for it if they were run by NESers in a NESing context. Some NESers have already done stuff like this, of course. Stormbringer famously (at least, famously to me) did it in NES2 VI, to my eternal annoyance as his ally, but at least he was working to make the story more interesting. Things like that, I think, should also be encouraged. Not necessarily failing out of utter stupidity and being at a total loss as to what to do, but failing purposely out of an attempt to make the never ending story more interesting. Hence my suggestion (finally): introduce a second stat, similar to prestige, that measures how interesting a player has made the history of a NES.
Obviously I - and the people with whom I've hashed out this idea already - haven't fully thought through its implementation. Prestige is more or less intuitive, but figuring out how to assign points for basically making an interesting story - to be rewarded at the end of the NES - seems much harder. Thoughts?
The problem with assigning prestige or something similar and more meta is that it is still be assigned by a mod. In my NESes, there are always some mathematics that go with my decisions, so, going along those lines, you could have a rule like 'if state x participates in a war-turn with 20 or more lost divisions, state x gets a prestige point.' Maybe other points could be awarded for stories that are echoed by a certain number of players and become an important part of the NES canon. The problem with these sorts of things, of course, is if the rules are known, they're easy to game, and if the rules are hidden, out come the shouts of favoritism.
The way to assign prestige has been set in stone for more or less a year, and there've been no complaints about it so far. Obviously it depends on the mod, but claims of favoritism impacting the outcome just haven't come up. Maybe it's because I don't have any obvious favorites. That's not really the issue.
As far as the in-character thing goes, I don't think sabermetrics will work in the same way you'd use them for the economy or military; it'd be like attempting to mathematically analyze the text of a book in search of the answer to the question "why is this a good book". Arbitrary mechanics like the number of stories that are influenced by another story (which barely happens anyway, in my experience) or combat losses miss the point. Of course it's subjective, but it'd ideally be subjective in a way that's generally agreed upon or at the very least generally understood.
Milarqui
Deity
Erm, I guess that you are saying that, in your alt-history, Maximilian I becomes the King of Spain. Though, in RL he wasn't even considered for the role, because the Spanish Parliament wouldn't have considered anyone that wasn't willing to become a king with very limited powers, and, if I am not mistaken, the Austrians were all but passed over by the people that were making the decisions. Amadeo of Savoy was chosen over Leopold because France complained when they heard about this and Leopold withdrew his candidacy.
Watch for "A Prussian in the Spanish Throne" in Alternatehistory.com for how could history have gone if the French never learned about Leopold's candidacy.
He wasn't considered for the Spanish throne in OTL because he was inconveniently dead at the time, chief.
Also, I find it amusing that you're presuming to lecture me about the international history of Europe in the 1860s and 1870s, much less by recommending that I visit the inbred community at AH.com.The TL kept him out of Mexico and conveniently available, and also altered the aftermath of the Seven Weeks' War to ensure Franco-Austrian pressure on the Spanish rebels to accept their king, even if he have fewer powers. His politics also matched up very well with Juan Prim's.
I don't think that's a very good answer either, because it's not like the goal is to vote people off the NES for not playing in character, but to encourage playing in character and/or playing to create a good story through positive reinforcement. Player's choice awards have other unfortunate implications of the "popularity contest" and "political clash" varieties (especially given the apparently stratified community we have between FFHers, EQNES players, and "everybody else"). Plus, they can't see each others' orders. The whole thing would serve very poorly as a judge of who is working to create the best story, and while it might not degenerate into a popularity contest immediately, it'd be too tainted by something like that such as to be virtually useless.
What I'm looking for is more like ideas about how to judge actions that are deliberately oriented towards creating a good story. What makes history interesting, in other words? Should I have players inform me about why they are enacting every policy they do, and why they make every decision that they do, with regards to the meta-story of the NES?
Well regarding prestige, I really don't play to win. I think it makes sense if you view it more as how well known either positive or negatively a nation/ruler is. I guess I just don't personally have a want or a need for a stat to determine a 'winner.' But like stated before I do like Prestige as a guage to how other nations should/do view mine.
I view story writing and interesting play more as being rewarded by the mod either through favorable (or like regarding Napoleonic events) perhaps semi positive events. Yes France lost, but they did create a whole new system of conscription/military. (Yes I dumbed this down signifigantly).
EDIT - This is probably why I tend not to 'win' in the NESing sense since I am more in it to have fun and roleplay.
EDIT 2 due to x-post -
I suppose you could. This might not be a bad idea because if their answer is along the lines of "because I want income" as opposed to "because the country needs to revitalize its industry to avoid falling behind it's neighbors." It would at least give you an idea how they view the NES and how you can appoach them. It would be more work for the Mod though.
I view story writing and interesting play more as being rewarded by the mod either through favorable (or like regarding Napoleonic events) perhaps semi positive events. Yes France lost, but they did create a whole new system of conscription/military. (Yes I dumbed this down signifigantly).
EDIT - This is probably why I tend not to 'win' in the NESing sense since I am more in it to have fun and roleplay.
EDIT 2 due to x-post -
I suppose you could. This might not be a bad idea because if their answer is along the lines of "because I want income" as opposed to "because the country needs to revitalize its industry to avoid falling behind it's neighbors." It would at least give you an idea how they view the NES and how you can appoach them. It would be more work for the Mod though.
I think that you don't really understand the concept of "prestige" as it's implemented in DaNES and PerfNES. It's not just rewarding competence and/or success, although that certainly occurs, because you don't just get prestige for winning wars or whatever. Like I said in the first post, it's an attempt to tie that together with actions that are important for roleplaying. In theory, Iggy, playing a stereotypically insular state and not embarking on any real wars for the whole NES, could gain maximum prestige and "win" the NES by simply making his country the best place to live in the world. (In theory.) In theory, the Papacy (if it were playable) could gain the most prestige by inducing conversions, building magnificent cathedrals, and so forth without actually engaging in the equivalent of the Italian wars.
But even that part of roleplaying really addresses people who roleplay without screwing up their country, deliberately or by accident. That's really what this in-character stuff is about: not roleplaying per se, but roleplaying badly on purpose for the purpose of the metastory.
Well, the whole proposal involves more work for the mod, so it's not like I'm averse to that. It's not really the amount of work, it's more the willingness of the mod to do it and do it quickly.Adrogans said:
Yes, but I do not approach it like that because I really don't care to win. I know that you intended to make it a measure of success, which if you wish to add in simply being interesting and roleplaying regardless of outcome then why not simply call it score and score players as you see fit?
Well, to be fair, orders that don't have obvious ramifications in update don't impact the NES in an interesting way, now do they? Espionage is the obvious hole in my assertion, but even spy activity often builds up to create flashy events obviously linked with a specific player. However, if what you're looking for is be the sole judge of yet another stat, I'm not terribly sure what's wrong with prestige, as it seems to already work, as you say. One mechanism that might play out the way you're thinking is spotlights, but that's hardly a new idea. Maybe more than one per update, in a way that makes them pseudo-awards?
This is not a discussion of the name of the stat, it's a discussion of what the stat should be measuring and how. "As see fit" is the problem, because I'm not entirely sure what to be counting.
It doesn't matter what the orders' actual ramifications are, it matters what the orders' intended ramifications are, I think. Say a first-time player bumbles around and accidentally destroys his economy, oops - let's say, by recruiting a colossal military from people who would have no business wielding a sword, in a totally out of character way, akin to the current debate about "powergaming" in IOT. Should I really be giving out an award for that? On the other hand, say somebody deliberately decides to overmint or something and destabilize her currency for the sake of making a more interesting setting - isn't that exactly what I want to be encouraging?
What this other award would do is encourage deliberately suboptimal play, as opposed to prestige, which does not. There's no point in redefining prestige for the purposes of encompassing suboptimal play for in-character purposes, because then prestige would cease to serve its own intended purpose, namely, striking a balance between competitive play and roleplaying. Hence the suggestion for a new stat, to encourage other kinds of play and give a player a tangible reason to go about creating an interesting story. It wouldn't make any sense to hand out individual awards per update for this, because we're looking at what makes the NES, overall, interesting - although obviously a running tally of this stat (possibly something like "best actor", for both meanings of the word actor, and no, that's not my idea) would be kept and updated with the updates.
Disenfrancised
Beep Beep
Inbred? Compared to a NESing community that makes the Habsburgs look like paragons of miscegenation? Hehe.
I dunno, we've had pretty decent turnover in the last several years, it just doesn't look as good because the community's smaller. Besides, the comment was half about the mindset of the community at AH.com and half about the Michigan Militia.
Well, as I said before, spotlights can encourage deliberately suboptimal play. But if you want a new stat, and you don't like the idea that nations in a mess can be prestige-ful, maybe the name of what you're looking for is virtue. Which can be tabulated based on (in-culture) principled actions, whether they are foolhardy or smart.
I don't think spotlights encourage much of anything. They certainly didn't when I played in NESes that had them.
I also don't really like the idea of rewarding players for being stupid because they don't know any better. That seems to screw up the link between cause and effect, which is prima facie bad.
The idea of in-culture principled actions is that players would have to know what their nation's culture is in order to make them. As for spotlights, you don't get pages and pages of people posting about being happy that they got top billing in an update, but I'm fairly certain the players who get spotlights (and more emphasis in general) do appreciate it.
