counterpoint
King
Advance warning. I'll be out of town from Saturday to Tuesday. These business trips usually either result in complete inability to post, or complete freedom to post a ton. We'll see which.
I guess this tree, being the new one, the very WotMod one, feels like it deserves to feel particularly tight and smart.
It's like we want "Sleep Rituals," but without being stupid.
What if it's framed more as a general trait that your culture has unseen allies, backroom handshakes, and betrayals as a part of its tradition? Sort of like Daes D'M for the Cairhienin, but more specifically evil. It's a hard set of words to find, but that's what we're looking for. "Mistrust of Allies" and that kind of thing. Is there a more official name for "shady deals"? Sedition is almost the right idea, but that implies conspiracy against your own govt, which this wouldn't be.
On that note... Conspiracy? Conspiracy Theory? I like these as societal traits - not super prideful though.
Mostly fine with these. I like the first two quite a bit, though they do suffer from the "added functionality" issue that Dreamspying had, though not nearly as badly. I think with Dreamcatchers, I'm curious what this would be used for, primarily. Adding DWards? Destroying DWards? Gathering the occasional glimmer? How does it help shadow players in the LB? Cool idea, though.
DW also cool. Again, how would this tie into a shadow strategy?
Not sure about double dipping in shadow. I think I would want to see the policy also have some other functionality.
In any case, I feel like all three of these could be made to work.
It's also possible that we could have both of these units be available from one finisher. That might be too good, though.
You're correct that he wouldn't be definitively Light. But he would be Light-linked, which is questionable mechanically (though not flavor-wise). His alignment-relation is through summoning threads - a specifically alignment-agnostic ability. Giving him more often to Light civs fights against his "neutrality" I'd say.
All shadow players receive BSisters. However, if you correctly Turn the Tower, there are now more BSisters than there are Regular Sisters. This just compounds that, and makes the overall range of this ability a bit wide for my taste. On the low end, a shadow player with low faith output in a light-heavy world might, for instance, go from 2 Sisters to a total of 4. By contrast, a high faith output shadow player playing in a successful-Turning game could go from, say, 8 sisters to 13. The difference between the +2 sisters and +5 due to faith isn't the problem - it's the total of 13 that's the problem (these values all theoretical).
Yes, they are a scarce resource like an LP, but unlike an LP, the level of their scarcity is due mostly to things that are going to be in many cases out of the player's control, or at least only partially under their control. Case in point - we don't have an analogous policy for normal Aes Sedai. What we do have is "+X to Aes Sedai quota," which may or may not effect black sisters (good question!). This could be adapted to be similar to that.
agreed.Dogmatic Morality it is!
If we're indeed replacing BRaiders, then yeah, I'd say Integrity will be fine.I totally see what you mean here, and I figured that's what we were moving towards in our last set of posts - a set of names that linked more into the flavor of the names of the branches. I don't think we need to be nearly as rigid as you're suggesting here though. Take the Integrity example: we have 3 Policies. I think Research League is pretty good relation to integrity (can't have a "league" of associated research contributions if folks don't act with integrity, it just falls apart). Peaceful Sleep less so, but we're still iterating on that name below (was above, until I reordered it). Borderland Raiders you're totally right, but only because we're scrapping that Policy and replacing it, right? So we're not trying to connect it to the notion of integrity, we need to do that with whatever replaces it.
yes, you're right. We don't have to settle this right now. However, we were going pretty far along the "make the mechanics match the flavor thing", such that it felt we had to examine the stuff conceptually at this stage.Pride I can totally see how we connect the concept of these mechanics to Pride-ful words that will communicate that to the player. We haven't found the right ones yet, but I'm confident we will. And in a forest-for-the-trees sense, aren't we just iterating on individual names of Policies to fix this issue? I totally agree with the overall objective of tying back to the flavor of what the branch means, but at this stage don't we just want to establish that the overall flavorful and mechanical direction of the things we want to do in the branch can be brought into line with that?
, I think my rigidness is misinterpreted here. Look, exactly zero of the policies we've lined up connect in a meaningful way to the Branch concept. I view that as a problem. That's all.I would also say that overall, the flavor of Integrity and Pride, in the context of a tree called Ethics, is very broad and not necessarily as restrictive as you're suggesting. Pride can be about conceit to do things people shouldn't, not just about the more personal definition of Pride in taking pleasure in achieving something. I think even the connection to several Shadow mechanics in themselves makes these things prideful, something that a civ that's truly obsessed with its own power would choose to do, despite the obvious risks of universal destruction.
I guess this tree, being the new one, the very WotMod one, feels like it deserves to feel particularly tight and smart.
of course. Totally agree.And if we're working on the flavor that we can connect a given mechanic back to the flavor of the branch it's in, that's working under the assumption that we're going to leave those mechanics the same. Which is already not the case for several of them (which is why we've stopped trying to make those flavor connections for Dreamspying and Borderland Raiders). Either mechanics or flavor can lead on any given Policy, and I feel like I've mostly started with mechanics here (mostly because this tree is one of the few Alignment-specific mechanics around, giving us a chance to make those a better part of the larger whole, and a lot of obvious flavor is covered in other mechanics in WoTMod so far). So it would make sense that we would decide on what relevant mechanics we like and then pull them back into the right flavorful naming. Which seems to be what we're doing now, though there's a good argument that should be phase 2.
Hmmm, I suppose I'm more or less ok with the Light side of things. The DPeace elements mechanically tie in. I suppose an element of selfishness, jingoism, and sort of civ-centeredness would be welcome in the Pride branch. That'd feel like it fits.Unless of course there is prevailing flavor for the notions of Integrity and Pride within WoT that I've not thought of when making these. Are there any specifically that come to mind? We can totally try to get some of those in here if there are.
Hmmm, we're getting close, I think. Peaceful sleep can survive for the time being. This name isn't one I have issue with as much because it doesn't link to Integrity (no matter what I said before) - it's really more that it doesn't feel like a Policy at all - that is, a societal trait. I see how, in fact, it sort of is one, but it doesn't strike me as on immediately.I see what you mean about wanting to link it back to the flavor of Integrity.
I will say I don't think Peaceful Sleep is so bad, the notion of someone who "sleeps peacefully" is someone who feels they don't have regrets, which is a way to see a person with integrity. (The idealized version, rather than someone who doubts whether they're always doing the good they wanted, which is much more grey.)
Mostly the flavor of what this Policy is is that the civ is using wards on Dreams to preserve the happiness/goodness of its people. (Keeping the Shadow's temptations at bay and the like.)
Something literal like "Dream Sentries"? "Universal Warding" - implying the Dreamwards are allowed to help everyone, where they would normally be reserved for more "important" defensive targets?
It's like we want "Sleep Rituals," but without being stupid.
I'm seeing Unseen Allies as a decent option. Not directly linked to pride, but not awful, either.Yeah, I was brainstorming on this same concept last time as well. There's definitely an avenue there for taking pride in things that are clearly nefarious and secretive, it's just hard to condense into a couple of words. I think this is our usual process though - go through a ton of options until we find the one that pulls the flavor and the mechanics together right.
More brainstorming:
Clandestine Support
Unseen Allies
What if it's framed more as a general trait that your culture has unseen allies, backroom handshakes, and betrayals as a part of its tradition? Sort of like Daes D'M for the Cairhienin, but more specifically evil. It's a hard set of words to find, but that's what we're looking for. "Mistrust of Allies" and that kind of thing. Is there a more official name for "shady deals"? Sedition is almost the right idea, but that implies conspiracy against your own govt, which this wouldn't be.
On that note... Conspiracy? Conspiracy Theory? I like these as societal traits - not super prideful though.
so what works? Heretical Research? Blasphemous Rumo(u)rs?I like the "man playing god" flavor and yeah, that was definitely the avenue I was pursuing in my last post. I do think the Policy is about that. It's establishing some process that allows these creatures that are twisted abominations to be bought and supplied at the drop of a hat. This implies some kind of ability to very quickly recruit them directly from the Shadow or somehow make them yourself, either of which ties into the notion of learning about how Shadowspawn tick. It doesn't need to be connected directly to Aginor, it's just that in the books timeline he's the person who worked out how to do these kinds of things. (And since he did that in the AoL that is the state of our WoTMod world as well, since we pick up After Breaking.) Even without Aginor, the flavor is the same notion of trying to understand the twisted workings of Shadowspawn.
yeah, I like all these ideas.Restricting the purchase to units you can otherwise build sounds like a good call. And that does create a scaling factor with Alignment tier. Our unbranched Policies certainly push players toward having higher tiers, which it would be good if the branches took advantage of that.
I also like the scaling on the sight ability.
Some of the Integrity ones are less scalable, like Research League, since that would get our of hand if it compounded with Light tier as well. Peaceful Sleep could produce more Light based on the player's tier, which seems quite reasonable. If we go with FtP on the last Integrity Policy, then we can extend the discovery range at certain tiers.
Maybe 2/3 scalable on both sides would be reasonable?
comments made previously on Pridefullness all still active on these.We don't have to preserve it, I was basically trying to come up with whole new "Shadow-style" abilities that we could use instead, related or not, but it just wasn't working for me on Tuesday night! I do figure the T'a'r link is a good idea if we can keep it somehow, but no particular guiding principles aside from that.
Dreamcatchers
Your Projections can enter the areas affected by Dreamspikes.
Dream Warriors
Your Projections can be expended, inflicting X% extra damage to the host in order to forcibly awaken an enemy Projection within range (which would cause the "killed" expiration damage) (This ability would be called "Tear from the Dream" or something.)
There are lots of options for generating Shadow through T'a'r actions, but we already have a Policy that boosts Shadow production. Would we want to dobule dip, since Turning objectives are infrequency?
Merciless Dreamers
Gain +30 Shadow whenever you force an enemy Projection our of T'a'r. +50 for killing non-Projection enemies in T'a'r, or Dreamspikes.
Mostly fine with these. I like the first two quite a bit, though they do suffer from the "added functionality" issue that Dreamspying had, though not nearly as badly. I think with Dreamcatchers, I'm curious what this would be used for, primarily. Adding DWards? Destroying DWards? Gathering the occasional glimmer? How does it help shadow players in the LB? Cool idea, though.
DW also cool. Again, how would this tie into a shadow strategy?
Not sure about double dipping in shadow. I think I would want to see the policy also have some other functionality.
In any case, I feel like all three of these could be made to work.
Yeah, they shouldn't be opposed.Agreed, I think that association of WBr/Light and DWalker/Shadow isn't great. Which would push back against having both as opposing finisher rewards on the Ethics tree. The WBr is also more about Alignment (not specifically Light or Shadow) through his Thread ability, so he could fit into the Faith/Alignment branch of the Myth tree. There is no pure T'a'r branch as we discussed before, which is where the Dreamwalker would probably fit best.
It's also possible that we could have both of these units be available from one finisher. That might be too good, though.
close, but not quite!Just in terms of counting, we have 11 LP types and 20 branch finishers, which is close to 1/2 (which would fit perfectly into having 2 of each).
Yeah, I find it pretty essential to some of the trees.Looking back at the earlier trees, I really hadn't noticed how many finishers unlocked the same LP on both branches. I thought we'd been actively avoiding that, but apparently that's not the case.
Yeah, I'd prefer to leave him off this tree, unless he's on both (which would be fine with me - we could put the DW on the earlier tree). We could also put the DW here on both, though he's not as relevant.I also don't think that putting the WBr on the Integrity tree makes him a definitively Light mechanic. I don't think WBrs should be strong enough that any Shadow civ to take Integrity (which has several dead Policies for them) for that unlock. And Shadow civs can still make them through T'a'r dominance. And of course, moving the WBr onto one branch of the Myth tree could also resolve this, if we did think that association was too strong. (Given there's already a flavor association, as you've said.)
You're correct that he wouldn't be definitively Light. But he would be Light-linked, which is questionable mechanically (though not flavor-wise). His alignment-relation is through summoning threads - a specifically alignment-agnostic ability. Giving him more often to Light civs fights against his "neutrality" I'd say.
The issues I have with it are as follows:I mostly come back around to thinking that I don't really see why we would avoid Black Sisters with Faith at this stage. It could be an awesome mechanic, and for Shadow players it will be something that really stands out as unique for them. They fulfill the same style of "scarce non produceable units that have really strong effects" as the other LP finishers and given we have so many more finishers than BNW, I think the main benefit of that is diversity of the kinds of bonuses we can give out with them.
All shadow players receive BSisters. However, if you correctly Turn the Tower, there are now more BSisters than there are Regular Sisters. This just compounds that, and makes the overall range of this ability a bit wide for my taste. On the low end, a shadow player with low faith output in a light-heavy world might, for instance, go from 2 Sisters to a total of 4. By contrast, a high faith output shadow player playing in a successful-Turning game could go from, say, 8 sisters to 13. The difference between the +2 sisters and +5 due to faith isn't the problem - it's the total of 13 that's the problem (these values all theoretical).
Yes, they are a scarce resource like an LP, but unlike an LP, the level of their scarcity is due mostly to things that are going to be in many cases out of the player's control, or at least only partially under their control. Case in point - we don't have an analogous policy for normal Aes Sedai. What we do have is "+X to Aes Sedai quota," which may or may not effect black sisters (good question!). This could be adapted to be similar to that.
right, so this sort of depends on what we do with the BSister finisher.... thoughts on that above.I wouldn't say the landsknecht Policy is so different. Initially I was going to suggest this Policy as just a Gold purchase option (like that one), but I figured that could use a bit of a boost. (There's also a bit of a problem with Shadow players having a built in Faith penalty, which may be relevant elsewhere as well.)
It's not that I don't think this could be a finisher, I agree it totally could. But I think the Black Sisters option is more compelling and this one has these properties that still make it appropriate to include as a Policy. Or if, at the next stage, we look at this Policy and come up with a better one that fulfills goals for the Pride tree, then we can swap them out then.
eh, I don't think so. I think the benefit of detecting spies at all might not be that useful in some game situations - I think some kind of minor "bonus" or something attached to it would be better. What about rewarding them for using their spies "with integrity" - i.e., as diplomats or something?Related to the above, would it be enough of an extra to make this scalable? So higher Light tier players reveal spies at a larger distance?
wait, I'm quite confused as to how that would work. Would they be carrying real seals?Also, not sure where this fits into the discussions above, but what about the ability to purchase Sealbearers somehow (on some Policy)? (With Faith, since it's much more finite than Gold?) That could make a huge difference to stealing strategies.