Seperate the RPG and Demo Game

I am becoming increasingly dismayed at the demise of our Demo Game.

The number of posts and activity in the RPG forum have now exceeded the number of posts in all other demogame forums combined. Sit back and think about that for a moment, as that means twice as much attention is being paid to the abstract components of the game, than is actually being put into the real game.

Let me deal with the first criticisms this post is sure to draw:

1) I am not bashing the RPG game, as while my role in it has been only in passing, it is clear that a lot of people are enjoying it, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.

2) Yes, post count does drop during the holiday season, yet the RPG forum has not experienced the same level of drop.

The focus of experienced and new citizens alike on their RPG interests is leading, in my opinion (and I fully expect disagreement), to poor attention to leadership duties, lack of planning, generally weak execution of our turn chats as the President sorts through all kinds of things not properly laid out in the instruction thread, etc...

Now we have a pending election where it appears unlikely that we will have candidates for all positions available, or worse, we will have people with no experience in the game self nominate and take offices for which (in general, and yes, there are always exceptions), they are not aware or able to carry out the responsibilities.

Meanwhile, the latest land deal, pub opening, picnic and joust etc... carries on with growing attendance.

My question is, has the time come to permanently seperate these two entities?

The RPG could at this point be better carried out in the NES threads, and it seems that the only reason citizens in the RPG game need the demo game is for a map... well the RPG'rs could easily take their own map as they see fit.

I for one would like to see a dedicated group of people interested in the well being of the demo game, and not what positions they can hold in terms of salary generation for RPG.

It's time to play the demo game people.

Hmmm... no opinions on this?

The situation is worse than I thought.

I agree that it does seem odd that there are more posts in the RP than in the DG. And it seems like there are many players in the RP who I have *never* seen post in the Demogame. I myself only take a passing interest in the RPG, usually just posting to help out a friend or spend some of my money I seem to accumulate there, but I wonder if separating the DG and RPG would be such a good idea. How would that attract new players? Granted, it does seem like the RPG leeches off of the main game, but I'm afraid that if we cut off the RP from the demogame all together, we'll lose more players than we'll gain...

I agree (I'm also taking a "passing interesting" - just trying to get a feel for it). It barely seems to be about the demogame at all. The only thing going for it is the tiles (even the techs are out of synch). I was REALLY hoping that the RPG would be more inclusive in that roleplay was more spontenious (i.e., less shops, banks, etc.). Shaitan seems to have this lucky job where he has a T3 line and has huge gaps where he can search the forums...

For others, just trying to comprehend it means spending hours reading that forum, analyzing your character stats, and planing your next move.

Here's what I don't see:


City and Provincial threads - There's no roleplaying about the city/province you're in.

War Threads - There's no roleplaying about the wars that are going on in the demogame.

Techs - At first, you had stock markets (even planes!) at 400BC! Now it seems to be 1 tech ahead (of who?). Techs should be the same as the current demogame tech. If you want a certain tech, then this should FORCE you to make some threads about getting it.

Events at city improvements - This is something I thought would be fun. But, apparently, you have to make it a business if you want to have, say, a harbor... There's nothing sponteneous there! You need people to buy stuff. They stop, the harbor goes - if not, it gets tedious and boring updating the thing. City improvements should have been a free "addition" that could also affect other cities without the improvement.

Here's what I mean:

Say you get Education. You can start a "Fanatikan Educators Group" that wants universities. Once a university is built, it gets a thread (that lists all universities). And, you can freely roleplay in there.

Personally, I think that tossing gold into the game (for EVERYTHING) makes people want to play the "minigames" to earn demogame gold rather than start discussions about the demogame itself...

(end of that rant)

Citizen Groups - (In both forums) Like the above, this also was one of the huge things in Demogame 1. While not quite "political parties", a few groups did generate interest in certain aspects of the game.

Integration - Again, the RPG is seperate, which is fine in its' current form. But, I would like to see it integrated in a more constructive form. In the first demogame, city threads were in abundance, and that's where a lot of the "RPG" stuff was. It even filtered into the threads, and we had events, like the Asphinxian Ball.

I had really hoped that this is what the RPG thread was going to be used for. (threads to interact with cities, provinces, and events IN the game - not just buying up tiles so you can participate in the 'conflict threads', or be "the richest person in Fanatika". True, this adds to the realism, but let's put gameplay into perspective. The game will get NOWHERE without discussion. We stopped the game for those tech trades, and there haven't been much discussion on those yet. (a bit more on the allience). I don't even see those things in the RPG, mostly because of the "1 tech ahead" rule, and apparently other strange rules for the conflict threads.


Personally, I'm starting to think the RPG would be better off as its' own forum, in the NES forums, and let constructive roleplay filter back into the demogame. As it stands now, the RPG is pretty much a leech...

I don't know if it's necessary to physically remove this thread and relocate it to another area of the forums, but I don't think anyone can argue that this creation has taken on a life of its own. What's dissappointing is that this life seems to be totally independent of the actual demogame.

In the demogame, we are at war with a powerful enemy and we have much need for discussion and input from all citizens on critical issues during a delicate retooling period. In the RPG, everyone seems to be concerned with whose private army is strongest and who owns which land tile. This disparity depresses me.

The demogame can be full of role-playing without the RPG subforum, but it seems like people are a little gun-shy to add a little of this flair to their posts lest they get banished by a moderator to the RPG subforum, forever lost in the tempest of indistinguishable threads.

More depressing is the fact that we could be so much stronger as a nation with a little more input from all players. We have over 150 registered citizens! Unfortunately, it seems that there are only a dozen or so that are willing to run for office or, at the very least, are interested in taking part in actual game discussions.

I don't think that the RPG forum needs to be moved. I just think that some of the RPGers ought to think hard before claiming to be a part of the Civ3 Demogame.

Well said Chieftess and 40J.

I guess I will say that it does act like a leech. The majority of the RPG revolves around Shaitan, houses, horses, nobility, and land. Within that subforum, there is one thread that has nothing to do with the actual 'Game,' the 'Religions of Fanatika. Other than that everything runs by rules, which is not what I expected the RPG to turn out like.

Perhaps it is a good idea to force the RPG out, to perhaps the NES forum, or perhaps it's own forum in the 'COLOSSEUM' (I shudder to think what would happen if AoA started moderating the RPG).

Originally posted by FortyJ

The demogame can be full of role-playing without the RPG subforum, but it seems like people are a little gun-shy to add a little of this flair to their posts lest they get banished by a moderator to the RPG subforum, forever lost in the tempest of indistinguishable threads.

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Well, it should be pretty obvious that Shaitan and I are not going to ban anyone for spamming unless it is obviously unrelated to this game. "Flair", as it is called, is most welcome as long as it does not become ridiculous.

Well, I think it would have been awesome if the RPG hadn't become what it was today (which could have been prevented if there wern't so many rules, and maybe if gold was never used), but now that it is here, I really challenge you to find a RPGer that wants to get rid of gold (well, poor people could be an exception). I fear that in creating the RPG, we have "created a monster".

Yeah, a Behemoth of an Evolving Organism...

Originally posted by Octavian X
Perhaps it is a good idea to force the RPG out, to perhaps the NES forum, or perhaps it's own forum in the 'COLOSSEUM' (I shudder to think what would happen if AoA started moderating the RPG).

Click to expand...

I wonder what AoA's Expression would be if he was Moderating that forum allong with Shaitan

Originally posted by Plexus
I really challenge you to find a RPGer that wants to get rid of gold (well, poor people could be an exception).

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That is kind of my point though.

It shouldn't be up to the RPGer's, especially the ones who spend 90% of their time in RPG, and only come out here to vote now and again, as to how the RPG game is related to the Demo Game.

At this point, I recommend that gpt and the like for RPG be completely unrelated to the Demo Game positions held. It is hurting the demo game.

Interesting subject Bill, but I think the problem lies more with the demo game than with the RPG game. Face it: your average citizen can have little impact on what happens in the demo game! Change that and you will bring people back to the demo game.

How do we change it? Reduce the number of decisions made in the chat. The quick chat proposal is a step in the right direction. Beyond that we should endeavor to split the demogame work load and power. What we've never been able to do is get people to move to other cities. Why? Because there was never any point in moving to another city. Late in DG1 some movement to Asphinxia did occur along with a bit of roleplay. But there was never any demogame reason to move from city to city. Eklektikos was sole citizen of Asphinxia for a long time during it's formative years. The only reason he lived there was because he was governor, i.e. the only citizen who had any say in what happened in Asphinxia! I've been advocating local elections since DG1. If governors were elected only by those who lived in the province then we'd have one reason for people to move around. If we gave mayors control of their cities' build queues (perhaps subject to gubernatorial over-ride) and made mayors elected by and accountable to each cities' residents we'd be able to integrate the demogame and RPG as Chieftess and others thought it should have been. We might also be able to foster teamwork wherein certain citizens are ever on the look out for thier home city, provincial citizens are also on the look out for their provinces, etc.
This brings me to the last point I'd like to make in this post. Ever since DG1 I've saw the demogame as a way to play Civ 3 with a bunch of people wherein we can micromanage just about every aspect of the game since we can break up the work load. Trouble is there seem to be very few people who want to do any work. When ever I want to know what trade possibilities their are I have to load the save and go through them myself. It would be nice to be able to go to the trade department thread and see current trade possibilities at a glance. It would be nice to go to the military department thread and see the current size of our armed forces and how much it would cost to upgrade the forces now. It would be nice to be able to go to the FA thread and see just who is at war with whom, etc. It would be nice to be able to go to a provincial thread and see (at a glance) what that province is producing or what problems the governor sees or what goals he or she has. It would be nice to go to a city thread and see a current screen shot of the city screen. We've rarely had leaders that would do these things. I'm about at the point of suggesting the demogame needs a beauracracy, some dedicated people who would regularly track current trade deals and keep an updated post in the trade department thread. Trouble is we have no way of rewarding anyone for doing so. The RPG has actualy outstripped the demogame in information processing. The demogame administration could learn alot from the RPG administration. Rather than seperating the two perhaps we should be working to re-integrate them.

I agree with you to a point donsig.

First, the Demo Game will never be the same as the RPG. It's like D&d versus Third Reich, two different types of games, and that is why they should be seperated.

I would like to see the demo game get back to the game we had in DG1 early, where there was the analysis of the game you described. The only way to get there is to permanently disconnect the two games, and allow the RPG only folks to go on their merry way and play their game.

I am not opposed to anyone who likes playing that game, but I feel in the long run, the demo game will attract more people interested in playing a game of civ if we seperate.

Your comments simply highlight that people are taking RPG gpt offices in the demo game, and then investing their detailed efforts into the RPG.

On a side note, I *love* roleplaying. I visit the Roleplaying forums at GFAQs all the time, I RP in my own clan in other games, I RP with friends just on my own. The DG RPG is *not* roleplaying. Roleplaying is where you take a character and act out a story, and I just don't see any of that in there. It's too materialistic, and doesn't have any focus on creativity, which is what roleplaying should be.

I must agree with donsig. Things HAVE gone down the hatch. I was just a participant of DG1 for a little while, but that was enough time to remember all of the reports you could access. Even I was doing this, creating tables representing every possible trade. I congratuate the Culture department for it's work in finding Fanatikan cities that are prone to flip. Domestic is getting their, but rather than waiting for someone to ask for a rush, it should recommend items for rushing.
Yes, perhaps it is possible that the RPG is sucking out our energy. If Shaitan devoted all his RPG time to a single department, that would be the best a department was ever run...

I did that lin term 3, Octavian. Some people appreciated my management style but many others did not.

This may surprise many people but I agree with the general assessment of the RPG. There isn't enough roleplaying. This is mostly my fault as I'm the system integrator. The basic rules are from a game I developed with a longtime group of RPG'ers. Serious RPG'ers. It worked well there because of the familiarity between the players and the general maturity level (as RPG game players, not in age). The essential problem is that we needed a system that could function without a game master and that is not easy to implement. The economic system was supposed to spark the role playing and limit the urge to excess. Recently there has been an upturn in role playing but there should be much more.

Separating the RPG won't help anything though. What it would basically do is lose us those players who are participating in the demogame (even to a limited extent) because of their attraction to the RPG.

Just deleted a 5 minute post I had made on the issue.

I think there is only a few things i need to say:

1) The RPG holds me(and others) to the DG. It's the only thing that keeps me voting and going to t/c's.

2) It wont be moved to the NES forum, it still requires the DG to operate, for land decisions and player salary.

3) Making the RPG less fun isn't going to make the DG more popular, just the RPG less popular.

4) I agree with shaitan, read: above.

Originally posted by Octavian X
If Shaitan devoted all his RPG time to a single department, that would be the best a department was ever run...

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You are correct. If you want to see an example check out the foreign affairs department in term 1 (and term 2?) of DG1. Shaitan was the department leader and no other department has been run better since.

As I've been saying all along, I agree with Veera and Shaitan that our "RPG" is not an RPG at all. People have sadly become obsessed with the whole "I'm gonna be richest/have the most land" thing. Really, WHO CARES WHO HAS THE MOST LAND? What we really need is to get people to RP more, like some of the more fun threads I've been partaking in (their names have already come up multiple times, no reason to take up more badnwidth with 'em.)

However, since that isn't exactly the topic of this thread, I will post something more on-topic. Seperating the games won't help. If they were sperated, the DG would lose a bunch of people who only hang around for the RPG, but who still at least participate in elections and stuff. We would also not attract as many new players (not that we have exactly overwhelming numbers of people joining at the moment....) Also, at least personally, I know that if the games where sepearted, I would pay no more attention to the real DG than I currently do. In fact, I'd probably pay less, as I'd be hanging around the Colosseum RPG thread instead of the general DG forums, waiting for stuff to happen. But even if I didn't spend less time, at best I would break even, because the reason why I (and I would think some other people) don't post in the other DG forums very often is because its not too often that anything of any great concern to me comes up. When a war is gonna start, our its election time, or the need to know how to use a GL, or what wonder to build, or anything of importance like that, I turn out and discuss, then vote. But it seems like these days the only thing that is ever up for discussion in the Citizen's forum are various city build queues, about which frankly my dear Bill_in_PDX I don't give a damn, or otherwise someone complaining about various decisions made by leaders (btw, last I checked, isn't a leader's job to lead, and therefore make decisions?). In the polls, the same poll(s) will remain there for like a week without anybody posting in them, and most of the time they are "confirming so-and-so form deputy of such-and-such province." OK, really, what need is there for Joe Citizen to vote on who is going to be the gov or deputy or whatever of a province they don't live in? And why bother, when it isn't exactly brain surgery posting a discussion on qeues, qriting the qeue, and posting it in the turnchat thread, and anybody who has been picked by our leaders for the job is probably confident? So what I'm saying, in a rather roundabout way (I have gotten 3 hours of sleep in the last 3 days.... forgive the ranting....) is that the problem lies in the DG, not the RPG. So don't say "aha! the RPG is a cancer eating away at our fair DemoGame! if we cut it off and send it to the NES forum, it will solve our problems!" It isn't gonna work. What we really need to do is take a long, hard look in the mirror and find out what is wrong with the DG. Thank you, and good night.