Think of Joe, and he will come. :p

Remember, I ran IV; I know spam better than most. ;) In retrospect, my references to 'roleplay' and 'storytelling' are probably the wrong choice of words; Sonereal is closer to the mark when he talks about 'world building'. What I was thinking of was how all the diplomacy was 'open-ended', in the sense that roleplay and policy were blended together in a casual way. Back then, we didn't write pages and pages of expository interludes; they were short little things like out of a newspaper, current affairs, not written like a history text. For sure, it still exists in some way, even if the I&B series adopted the NES approach of veritable book excerpts :)p), but with a shift toward more mechanically-oriented games, I've found that a) there's a perceptible divide between "orders" and "speech", and b) the roleplay tends to favour embellishing the budget, and only covers intangible topics if there's time/a monetary incentive to do so. There's no room to grab a thread and weave an adventure out of it unless it offers a statistical reward. That Rouge Army/First Shadow hot potato from IOT3 would be unthinkable today.

Now, when I'm talking about co-operation, I don't mean everyone was playing as peaceniks, obviously; IV, as you said, was cut-throat from the get-go. But with the exception of the Usual Suspects, there was a mutual respect amongst the base that seems to have evaporated, at least in the recent games I've played. Remember, pre-IV, all orders were public, even the invasions; we trusted each other; there was a sense of camaraderie that tempered the in-game disputes. Nowadays some of the stuff is just so ugly, particularly OOC; if you have some free time and belief in human dignity to kill, read over the spats between Ailedhoo and Patriotic_Fool in The Space Race.

I guess what's frustrating me more than anything else isn't the shift in the style of game, but the sort of people who end up playing it. To adapt that lovely quotation from Chapterhouse: Dune, "Combat attracts pathological play styles. It is not that combat corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such players have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
 
Ah, ok, I see what you're getting at more now.

I think these are all the expected results of IOT growing in size and population over the course of the years. Back when it first started, yeah, it was small group (I could probably name everyone who played on my fingers). With that small of a group, you're going to develop bonds, camaraderie , and respect for each other and such.

But once IOT took off (especially once we got out own wittle forum) its grown to include a lot of new faces. And with the new faces it becomes a lot less personal than it used to be, hence you'll get a bad seed or two that seems to fight with everyone. That's just a natural consequence of the franchise growing.

I think mechanizing the rules over time was probably how we began to cope with new faces and expanding player bases, we just didn't notice it creep up on us. But to be honest, I'm not sure there's any other way to handle a large game without mechanistic rules. We could get away with the original style of gameplay for the precise reasons you outlined, we were a small bunch, we knew each other, we respected each other, and when a game was over we could all laugh about it (Ok I lied, I remember reminiscing about IV with tanicious once or twice :p).

But now that we do have an expanded player base, I think the best way to deal with it being less personal is with mechanical rules and a less free-for-all atmosphere. Imagine a classic style game now, it would crash and burn before anything actually happened :lol:
 
Imagine? I'm watching one burn as we speak. :lol:

Spoiler :
:cry:
 
A World War on Turn II, more exactly.

Just like old times. :p
 
At this point its tradition :lol:

I mean it even followed me into I&B2, though it wasn't a world war as much as a massive regional war. REBEL SCUM
 
Sonic, what would your games be without 'lil 'ol PF?

Peaceful and dull!

I just realized I typed sonic instead of tani. WHAT HAVE I DONE? *hands shaking*

What's happening?... *cough*

My god!! Help!
 
A World War on Turn II, more exactly.

Just like old times. :p

The only way we can beat that is just by having everyone start the game at war with everyone else.
 
To be fair, early world wars only exist because most rulesets don't worry about that pesky three-syllable word "logistics".

To me, massive wars are enjoyable when there is real tension, which usually doesn't exist in IOT because the odd thing massive wars is that they end quickly and easily. We're so jaded to the concept of a global war that when it happens, we're like "meh". To contrast, when the Great War broke out in Capto Iugulum, it was a pretty big deal it seemed.
 
…I have much better memories of Iron and Blood than I do of IV. Don't get me wrong, IV was fun, being warmonger Japan, but it never got to the high point I&B did. The diplomatic situations, the wars, the evolution of the ATK, the world, felt more real, more tense and more challenging in I&B compared to IV. Hell, you can ask GamezRule if you want, I still reminisce with him about the final standoff between his alliance and mine in the final years of I&B, why things went the way they did, and possible alt-scenarios. This doesn't happen to me with IV, whenever I think of that game its more along the lines of "haha we had fun didn't we" rather than "if only I did this, maybe the entire course of the game would have been different". I know that's poorly explain, but the basic gist is that I've had so much more fun with evolved IOT's compared to the original batch.

Iron and Blood was my first ever IOT. It is the standard by which I judge all other IOTs, but unfortunately very few live up to that high standard. For me it had the right mix of RP, mechanics, actual diplomacy, and a great balance of power throughout the entire game – up to and including the point where GamezRule and I and our handful of remaining allies defied the odds and came out on top of the rest of the world.

Of course forcing your empire into a smoldering mass of instability goo was quite amusing as well. :p
 
I actually didn't think Iron and Blood was that great. Sure, it had all the nice things you mentioned, but everyone was even more willing to fight over stupid things than usual and it fell apart for no reason at all at the end, so it really sucked at the end.
 
Iron and Blood was my first ever IOT. It is the standard by which I judge all other IOTs, but unfortunately very few live up to that high standard. For me it had the right mix of RP, mechanics, actual diplomacy, and a great balance of power throughout the entire game – up to and including the point where GamezRule and I and our handful of remaining allies defied the odds and came out on top of the rest of the world.

Of course forcing your empire into a smoldering mass of instability goo was quite amusing as well. :p

Bah, the espionage mechanics were OP :p

If we didn't have them, it would have been a glorious fight to the end! The post-war world looked really fun.

I actually didn't think Iron and Blood was that great. Sure, it had all the nice things you mentioned, but everyone was even more willing to fight over stupid things than usual and it fell apart for no reason at all at the end, so it really sucked at the end.

I dunno about you, but I liked the world. The petty fighting felt realistic and gave an organic sense to the world.

The ending did suck, but that was due to *cough* unbalanced espionage mechanics *cough*.

As I said if the game didn't end at the failure of Operation Downfall, the post war world would have been very interesting.
 
Iron and Blood was my first ever IOT. It is the standard by which I judge all other IOTs, but unfortunately very few live up to that high standard. For me it had the right mix of RP, mechanics, actual diplomacy, and a great balance of power throughout the entire game – up to and including the point where GamezRule and I and our handful of remaining allies defied the odds and came out on top of the rest of the world.

Of course forcing your empire into a smoldering mass of instability goo was quite amusing as well. :p

That's an unreasonable standard. It wasn't a normal IOT at all.

I actually didn't think Iron and Blood was that great. Sure, it had all the nice things you mentioned, but everyone was even more willing to fight over stupid things than usual and it fell apart for no reason at all at the end, so it really sucked at the end.

I concur. Kiwitt's judgement towards the end was strange, to say the least.
 
To be fair, early world wars only exist because most rulesets don't worry about that pesky three-syllable word "logistics".

To me, massive wars are enjoyable when there is real tension, which usually doesn't exist in IOT because the odd thing massive wars is that they end quickly and easily. We're so jaded to the concept of a global war that when it happens, we're like "meh". To contrast, when the Great War broke out in Capto Iugulum, it was a pretty big deal it seemed.

The World War that just ended in Valkyrie was actually a decent one.

The unfortunate thing about IOT wars is that the warplan system is way too open-ended. It just doesn't work to have a war decided by who put nicer arrows on a map. I personally think that the boardgame approach of your latest IOT is the best way to do it, even if some may feel that the roleplay element is missing. I've been working away on a hex-based system, but it's been spinning its wheels as I try to grasp how modern conventional warfare actually works.

The IOT that comes up with a fun, engaging way to resolve wars that's relatively easy for the GMs and the players will completely revolutionize IOTs.
 
Time to throw my 2 cents in the pot.

I think Thorvald's OP has some reasonable points - we don't have a community on the level he describes - but I also disagree with it. My first IOT was IOT2, so I jumped into the existing community and never really felt a part of it until . . well, actually, it was probably IOTCW that really made me feel a part of the IOTland commune.

I'm an RPer. I really am. I enjoy making characters and writing about them, which is unsurprising to anyone who knows about my hobby/vocation/career as an author. There's something just . . . fantastic about essentially playing god, creating people like in the Sims and putting them through trials and situations just to study their reactions. That drew me into writing in the first place - the power of a character - and it's what has kept me focused on RP in IOTs. I consider MP and MP2 my best RP and concept RP, respectively - though I don't like my general performance in MP1.

I consider RP a staple of the game, and wish we'd have more of it in IOTE2 and IOTCW2 when it comes out - though I'm miserly with RP bonuses, perhaps because I'm lazy and perhaps because somewhere deep down I believe writing a beautiful world is its own reward. I yearn to see someone else build something like my tales of King Gregory or Empress Taylor, despite both being cut short before their conclusions.

In many ways, I sound like a perfect NESer - I don't really like balancing rulesets for results, with a few key exceptions, whereas I have a fetishistic adoration for a beautiful, well-crafted story and characters. My issue is I'm not a team player, very often, and my opinions of others lean toward the brutally frank, leading me to dislike a significant portion of the people I know on this forum, and the NES forum burned me twice when I tried to get into it.

Personally, that's why I like more impersonal games. It's always fun to make stories, but when the community is so absorbed in how they perceive the game is proceeding that a newcomer trying to create his own story has to be quashed before he upsets their balance, it's gone a bit far. That's my main beef on the RP subject with Thorvald's assertions about the earlier IOTs - I would have been booted by acclamation from IOT4 and I practically was in IOT2 despite being in from the start, because I couldn't keep up with the story.

On the subject of problem players, my main irritation is the lack of GM intervention and mod action. I'm a firm proponent of a GM's right to rule his own game, and have used the banhammer in the past to maintain order and a nice environment. I've preemptively banned some people at some times(the process known as blacklisting) and still maintain one, though I'm a tad more open about it these days in case I've misjudged people.

As an example of what I'm talking about, one player in MP2 was a significant irritation to the community and the GM by popular acclamation. If I had been the GM, he would have found himself booted unceremoniously long before things built to a head the way I've been told they did. Even in IOTX, I would probably have deployed the banhammer on Aillied and P_F both if they couldn't pull themselves together and stop squabbling. Call me authoritative, but I jealously horde the prerogative to maintain order in my games - more mods willing to kick players, use blacklists and instill in-game penalties in order to discipline problem players would be a significant step in the right direction, combined with mod overwatch to ensure nothing's being used unfairly.

In terms of rulesets, IOTE2 and IOTCW2 follow in the footsteps of their respective originals - tight, focused wargames. There's been a lot of talk about how war is the only thing to spend money on, other than making more money, in modern IOTs, and I tend to agree that something has to be done about that. Were my Era IOTs anything but what they are, they would probably have more of a domestic focus, with things like taxes, infrastructure projects, education funding, and other such factors.

Honestly, I think the best approach to the combat system is the one I pioneered for IOTE2, using Sonereal's Standard Combat System as a base. Add a couple unit types, with different strength values and costs, and some special abilities, and factor based on an RNG. It's simple, efficient, and RPing plans and anything else military-related provides combat bonuses. It takes me less than a minute to run any battle, and even long, drawn-out campaigns can be symbolized by running the battle calculation multiple times and picking the winner from, say, best 3 out of 5, as I do in IOTE2, and you could easily adopt the MP1 system of grouping territories into regions, fighting one big battle, then assigning gains based on the scale of victory, from Pyrrhic to Blitzkrieg. Anyway, everyone has a chance, anyone who RPs has a better one, and it's easy.

The unique units from recent NESes are also an idea I could incorporate into what I'll dub the "LH-Sonereal System(LHSS)" or perhaps Standard Combat System 2. Adding a set of unit stats and making people spend cash to customize their perfect unique weapon would be a way to personalize the game and the RP that could be gained from the design and deployment processes, especially with a technology minigame added in. The amount of work would be extreme, but a couple of GMs might be able to work together and create a fully functioning "Standard Unit Creator" of sorts that meshes into the LHSS with offensive, defensive, preemptive, land, naval, air and siege STR factors plus cost and special abilities, all based on component parts. But that's a long shot, really.

I also concur that Iron and Blood sucked. I tried to get into it but I just couldn't make sense of anything about anything, which pretty conclusively locked me out of the game.

The TL;DR version: Thorvald has a few good points, but I disagree strongly with the assertion that IOT is dead. We need more people willing to RP, and perhaps different RP styles, or in-game "RP-off" events that anyone willing to RP their response to a situation could try to win a bonus from, with the winner decided by nonplayers or the GM. But IOT's not dead - in fact, it's in its prime, and it'll only be dead when no one RPs and it just turns into a big argument fest. Which the addition of GMs as willing as I am to ban and blacklist would neatly take care of.

-L
 
The World War that just ended in Valkyrie was actually a decent one.

The unfortunate thing about IOT wars is that the warplan system is way too open-ended. It just doesn't work to have a war decided by who put nicer arrows on a map. I personally think that the boardgame approach of your latest IOT is the best way to do it, even if some may feel that the roleplay element is missing. I've been working away on a hex-based system, but it's been spinning its wheels as I try to grasp how modern conventional warfare actually works.

The IOT that comes up with a fun, engaging way to resolve wars that's relatively easy for the GMs and the players will completely revolutionize IOTs.

I planned a system using the Allies and Axis units as a base in which movement and combat not only drain fuel and supply, but that fuel and supply has to be brought to the units via supply vehicles or. The units would have some carry capacity to allow for short-range operations but, ultimately, it would take rail, truck, sealift, and airlift to get the stuff troops need when they're far away from your cities.

Plus, terrain gives some defense bonus and also affects how fast supply can actually get to the front.

The bonus of this system is that, in a lot of IOTs, the defender has to be given a flat defense bonus in combat to simulate bonuses the defender would get in real life. In this system, the supply lines are shorter and the defender gets first dibs of defensive positions.

This only balances well with the hex system at the moment. Normal provinces could work, but they're not as balanced. :shrugs:

I believe that these changes actually make the game less of a war game, since the costs and time required to wage a war are increased. War is no longer the first option for most powers.

The unique units from recent NESes are also an idea I could incorporate into what I'll dub the "LH-Sonereal System(LHSS)" or perhaps Standard Combat System 2. Adding a set of unit stats and making people spend cash to customize their perfect unique weapon would be a way to personalize the game and the RP that could be gained from the design and deployment processes, especially with a technology minigame added in. The amount of work would be extreme, but a couple of GMs might be able to work together and create a fully functioning "Standard Unit Creator" of sorts that meshes into the LHSS with offensive, defensive, preemptive, land, naval, air and siege STR factors plus cost and special abilities, all based on component parts. But that's a long shot, really.

For the combat system I was talking about above, unique units are not only possible, but sorely needed. The system I'm using is that an increase in one area leads to changes in others. For instance, increasing the Attack Power of this unit below with just the bare minimum spending needed to do so would increase the IP cost, Fuel Cost, Supply Cost, and decrease Movement range.

Hence, the idea would be that to create units, an existing one would be used as a model, and the game is about constantly improving and shifting the abilities of a unit to meet your needs. Special abilities would range from submarine detection to indirect bombardment to others that would pop up over time.

Mechanized Infantry (4 IP)
Storage: 10 Fuel/Supply
1/2/2. Drains 1 Supply each Combat Round. 2 Fuel per hex.
Mechanized Infantry is the best defender if you have fuel, being able to rapidly deploy when and where you need them.

Unit Name (IP Cost)
Storage: X Fuel/Supply
Attack/Defense/Movement. Supply/Fuel drain.
SPECIAL if any
Description
 
I liked very much... IOTCW? That one that was NATO vs Warsaw Pact, with the different units. That was awesome and, had players been paired, it would have been a very exciting exercise in tactical decision-making. I'm eagerly awaiting CW2.

And thus I really hope for the addition of UUs. They're too expensive in Capto Iugulum for me to be able to afford the cost of developing one. ;)
 
I liked very much... IOTCW? That one that was NATO vs Warsaw Pact, with the different units. That was awesome and, had players been paired, it would have been a very exciting exercise in tactical decision-making. I'm eagerly awaiting CW2.

Wrong CW.

 
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