The Death of IOT

[CivOasis]

In general, there exists some sort of mechanic tied into one's economic/military/technological input or a random selection, if applicable. A few rare cases can have shared or contested provinces, as noted above. I am not aware of any that operate on a first-come, first-serve. At least, not any recent ones.

 

[Birdjaguar]

To me, an outsider, IOT games seem very chaotic with less obvious progression. How does this contribute to the experience?

 

[SamSniped]

To me, an outsider, IOT games seem very chaotic with less obvious progression.

...yeah, sums it up.

 

[Mosher]

Some (most) are chaotic, but others (SE, Valk) are fairly stable and progressive (most of the time).

 

[SamSniped]

SE and Valk seem more like NESes to me, tbh. Not that it's bad, but just saying.

 

[Luckymoose]

NES may be much more verbose in its daily discussions, but at the end of the day, in both games the roleplay is a façade, mere decoration for computations seeking the maximization of statistical advantage.

You'd be absolutely incorrect.

 

[Mosher]

SE and Valk seem more like NESes to me, tbh. Not that it's bad, but just saying.

Well, yes. The intention was for a deep, complex RP-based game for SE.

You'd be absolutely incorrect.

I think what he means is that RP in NESes are usually just flowering what could be done with a few sentences... though I in this case agree with you.

 

[Luckymoose]

I think what he means is that RP in NESes are usually just flowering what could be done with a few sentences... though I in this case agree with you.

In IOTs it might be true that roleplay is only for gain, but not so in NESes. NESers roleplay because it is what we do, and it typically gives no bonuses at all. So when we write out story arcs of novel length for a NES, it isn't a facade.

 

[Symphony D.]

Rightly or wrongly, Imperium Offtopicum is likened to another CFC culture, Never-Ending Stories. In its infancy, IOT was derided as an "even lazier LazyNES", an unwitting imitation that eschewed hard mechanics and dumbed down diplomacy. Today, IOTers cling to the notion the camps remain distinct by claiming IOT is "gameplay-oriented" while NES is "story-oriented". I freely admit that despite repeated attempts at research, my understanding of NES is cursory at best; but I would argue that IOT and NES are now much more similar than ever before, that the pursuit of increasingly complex mechanics renders the games practically distinguishable only in their respective decorum. NES may be much more verbose in its daily discussions, but at the end of the day, in both games the roleplay is a façade, mere decoration for computations seeking the maximization of statistical advantage. Perhaps the moderators are right: perhaps it's time the forums were merged and the communities combined. At least then we would get postcount.

As someone who's been in NES on and off since 2005, and has had occasion to look at early games back farther, let me help shed some light on the matter.

Early NESes were story-driven, tended to focus on story diplomacy and story wars, with loose moderator arbitration to tie up and summarize events, and with initially little emphasis on maps. This was the period from about 2002 onward. If this sounds familiar, it should, because it's largely what you just described about IOT. Increasingly, some people brought in board games and statistics were increasingly added in 2003 and 2004 onward, and the map became more important. By the time I came in, in 2005, it was fairly common for war to be a defining feature of gameplay. Going forward, there were innumerable arguments about what should dominate and what did dominate: gameplay or story. Between 2007 and 2009 there was much discussion of the issue. We even had diatribes much like your own.

From about 2010 onward NES has existed in a period of post-discussion on mechanics. There is no unified way of approaching it that is adhered to by the community. Some games are intensely stat driven but don't emphasize war and get stories. Some games are intensely war driven but garner stories. Some games are intensely story driven but feature war. And so on. There is no singular prototypical NES to which you might point and say "This is how NESing is." People do their own things and people can choose to participate or not.

If anything, what you're seeing right now is what we saw half a decade ago. All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

So yeah, actually, maybe the moderators are right and the communities should be merged. You would have more people who agreed with you and wanted a very solid roleplaying focused experience and the people who disagreed with you could find plenty of games that are competition focused. Dunno, couldn't say, not my call, but what you're seeing here is by no means new. The question is: what do you want to do about it, knowing that?

 

[JohannaK]

OMG, Sonereal is driving IOTs into NESes!

Spoiler :

 

[Patchy]

I really see nothing wrong with merging the comunities. Quite frankly the only difference I can see from my new introduction to NES's and IOT's is that NES's don't use a province based map.

 

[SamSniped]

In IOTs it might be true that roleplay is only for gain, but not so in NESes. NESers roleplay because it is what we do, and it typically gives no bonuses at all. So when we write out story arcs of novel length for a NES, it isn't a facade.

Example- N3S stories

 

[Terrance888]

Spoiler :

My, This Seems Very Familiar.

NESers don't play to create these days, they don't play for love of what we do here. The average player desires nothing more than an all-out wargame romp, where they can endlessly throw their soldiers around the room ad hoc, without any kind of logic behind their actions. They want to go on conquering until they are defeated, boast about their great victories, then write hundred word, three paragraph "stories", then claiming that they are obviously not playing to win, for otherwise they wouldn't have written them. This is, of course, garbage. Players don't care about their nations.

It seems that IOT is merely hitting the same stage of development NESes have.

What was once an open-ended world-building exercise has been mechanized and wargames are coming to the fore.

Many of the old guard are leaving, and the survivors either integrate with the new comers or stand aloof.

Role play has become soulless.


In the end, the true and only way get out of this particular hole is to mature out of it. Currently, we have NESes that fit every flavor. Want to roleplay? We have a couple of them. Want to do some geopolitics? We have a couple of those too. Blatant wargames? Yup. Boardgames? Yup. Even want to try a crazy experimental game that tastes of IOT?

Yup.

In the end, it is up to the moderator to define how he wishes for his NES to go and for the players to understand that before they join. For example in my NES, I said that stories may not give direct benefits; HOWEVER, they increase my understanding of your nation, enjoyment of your participation, allows me to write more about your nation. And all these are the benefits I offer.

In other NESes they offer large amounts of fluid benefits. Thlayli in End of Empires and his Satar are almost notorious for getting out of slippery situations simply because his people are tied into the fabric of the world's story.

Some offer specific, limited benefits. INESes offer only a single EP's worth of benefit per "Worthy" story.

In the end, a mature thing to do is to create what you want if no one else offers it. I wanted to play a fresh start. There were no fresh starts. I started a fresh start. Now, several have already taken from my example and started fresh starts of their own.

If you want a game with role play is at the fore. Start one. Make it clear our aims and hopes for your IOT and then lay down the law when it gets infringed upon. Your example may just be the vanguard of a RP revival.

If you want a game focusing on mechanics with role play secondary, start one. Show off your new rule set and how well it works and maybe, it would become a quasi-standard in the community.

Take a stand for the future of your community.

I played IOTIV in the days of yore, and who knows, maybe one day I will truly be back.

X-posted.

 

[Tani Coyote]

Claims are GM to GM. Some games have it become a joint territory and use roleplay and the like to decide who it goes to, others use combat; my preferred tactic is to make it disputed and let the players settle it peacefully or violently. They can cut a deal for one to withdraw, divide the disputed lands equally, give it to the UN or some other body, or just settle it like gentlemen on the battlefield.

As for no progression: it really depends. Most descend into chaos fairly quick, while others remain stable. Ultimately what turn it takes depends on the players involved. Some players seek nothing short of victory and ruthlessly pursue it; needless to say they rise quickly and are likely to be the epicenter of any carnage. Others play just for the fun of it, not caring if they win or lose, and while they may succeed or fail, they remain stress-free.

Story progression ultimately becomes focused on the primary powers (this is true even of the epic IOT IV, the focus was on my nation, the GM's nation, and Petrograd) and what they do. Some powers choose to lead the world to a golden age (often failing), or plunge it into a hellish nightmare (often succeeding).

In Multipolarity I, the story tended to make very radical changes, as it was near impossible to be the supreme power for more than one turn. The game only ended when my poorly thought out mechanics for annexation ended up doing the game in. It was going to devolve into a world war anyway. That constant paranoia and lack of knowing what was going to happen next, I feel, was probably one of the most appealing factors of that game. One turn a country could be as insignificant as a third world city-state and next turn it would suddenly be a budding superpower.

 

[CivOasis]

I would say IOTs in general progress, though not like NESes do.

In my experience, IOTs are usually exponential, and (again, in general) usually follow a very board game-like structure. Hence, they progress more as a game than NESes, which tend to expand with a greater focus on rational expansion and plot progression.

In other words, both progress, but the progression is dependent upon very different things.

 

[North King]

Oh, hush, Lucky. Neither mine nor his were saying anything that was particularly untrue.

We were all so young back then... At any rate, Thorvald, if you really do prefer roleplaying and think the forum has left you behind, I guarantee you at least two NESes are far more about RP than mechanics (see: mine, whose rules/stats are essentially just guesstimates for you to keep track of your relative strength, and Starlife's one that's about to start, which almost literally copies my ruleset).

 

[JohannaK]

IOTs happen to implode at a point, collapsing around a worldwide conflict or something like that. During a few turns, maybe one, maybe two, they suddenly grow ten pages longer overnight, and when it settles down it stops growing altogether. Because there are few people who RP. LH, DT and Thorvald do good RP. Filli noctus too, when he plays, and christos and PF and Ailedhoo just spam RP like mad.

Here I use spam in the sense of producing lots of it. Ailedhoo's is arguably quite better, but it's annoying at his usual rate.

 

[Sonereal]

So yeah, actually, maybe the moderators are right and the communities should be merged. You would have more people who agreed with you and wanted a very solid roleplaying focused experience and the people who disagreed with you could find plenty of games that are competition focused. Dunno, couldn't say, not my call, but what you're seeing here is by no means new. The question is: what do you want to do about it, knowing that?

OMG, Sonereal is driving IOTs into NESes!

Spoiler :

Well, merging would be beneficial to people who rather not have to navigate between NES and IOT for rather similar games.

To me, an outsider, IOT games seem very chaotic with less obvious progression. How does this contribute to the experience?

Depends on the game. The latest nature of games, in a drive towards becoming world simulators with numbers, accidentally hit a snag when the military mechanics were "evolving" far faster than the peace time mechanics. Combine this with how the economy is usually more abstract than the military, everyone is subtly pushed towards a more aggressive playstyle because there isn't a whole lot to do in peace time.

 

[Terrance888]

because there isn't a whole lot to do in peace time.

That isn't a mechanics problem. That is a paradigm problem.

EDIT: There is a LOT to roleplay about the economy and domestic issues.

 

[Patchy]

What is the NES people's opinion on the merging of the two communities?