Re-Making the RPG

[Strider]

I think we should try to totally re-make the RPG.... scrap EVERYTHING... and start working on it to get ready for the launch of DG4. Pretty much, mix the best of the old with the best of the new.

Some of the things I didn't really like (and think should be fixed):

• First off... Multiple characters.... I orginally meant the RPG to be YOU living within the Demogame. Not 3 or 4 of your differant charcters. It's turned more into you telling a story... then you living it.
• Characters dying... The charcters in the game SHOULD die, but not by any real life cause's. Remember... this is suppose to be based off a game inwhich a leader lives forever... and people only die by disease.

I think this could be the only way to get the RPG going again. No offense (stuck), but right now the RPG as no dedicated leaders, managers, or any power of authority....

So who's for trying this? (total remaking of the RPG that is)

 

[GenMarshall]

I like the idea of restarting the RPG. But Im not to thriled over the, Characters should die.

 

[Grandmaster]

Count me in. I say gut it all and start anew. First few ideas:

RPG Governance

We need a hierarchial system, not a team of equals. It could go something like this:

Game Master- Chief executive; has final say over everything ; his word is law.

Economic Manager- Reports to Game Master; controls banking, currency, allows job start-up, sets standardized prices

Character Manager- Reports to Game Master; controls list of characters (one per person, methinks), records life and death; other character related jobs

Conflict Manager- Reports to Game Master; records troops locations and amounts, decides battles, moderates treaties, etc.

Then there would be under-managers like Item Manager and Banker (report to Economic); Character Sub-Manager (does Character's grunt work); Mapmaker and Troop Manager (report to Conflict.)

Of course that's just a rough outline.

 

[Grandmaster]

Characters should die eventually. What I'm saying is this: you play as yourself. Your life span is like 2 months. After you die, a son/daughter/heir takes the characters place. For me it'd be:

Grandmaster of Nova Vaniria
Grandmaster II
Grandmaster III
Augustus Grandmasterus

And so on... my family continues on, even in death.... get it?

Oh, and death would be either natural, or from wounds in combat (decided by Conflict and Character together)

 

[Strider]

Originally posted by Grandmaster
Characters should die eventually. What I'm saying is this: you play as yourself. Your life span is 3-4 months. After you die, a son/daughter/heir takes the characters place. For me it'd be:

Grandmaster of Nova Vaniria
Grandmaster II
Grandmaster III
Augustus Grandmasterus

And so on... my family continues on, even in death.... get it?

Oh, and death would be either natural, or from wounds in combat (decided by Conflict and Character together)

We need to pull up some of the old threads and go through those... I've been going through the VERY first RPG thread... looking for some idea's... I'll post the links for some of the other important one's also.

 

[Strider]

First RPG Rules

First RPG Forum

First RPG Thread (<---- Look here espicially... tons of great idea's by Chieftess, Disorganizer, Shaitan, and myself.

 

[Donovan Zoi]

I've got a full plate here, but I will do what I can to help.

I think it worked really well when we just had one character and surrounded that player with a supporting cast. And although it played out somewhat outside of the tech tree, I also liked the personal business aspect of the game. However, that was made possible mostly by Shaitan's tireless dedication.

If we were to do this, I would really like us to stay true to the actual game being played --- its techs, events within the game, maybe even get back into the land auctions.

Whatever we do, we have to keep it simple. If we come up with too many complex rulesets, it will dissuade people from joining and will ultimately start to alienate the hardcore members. You saw that happen in this RPG.

I will give this matter some thought, and bring forth any ideas I come up with. I would ask anyone interested in resurrecting the RPG to do the same.

Thanks,

DZ

 

[Octavian X]

Here's a proposal.

Just drop the whole governance thing. No managers, nada. We let the stories flow from there, with the only restriction being that you can't 'god-mod,' or do anything that isn't realistic (ex: I kill you with my 3,000,000,000,000 nukes!).

 

[Grandmaster]

Octavian, as wonderful as that sounds, we can't trust people to be able to handle it on their own. There has to be some sort of authority to enforce the rules. Otherwise people get ridiculous (a la the Volcano Thread ) and things start spiraling downward.

 

[Padma]

Unfortunately, Octavian, I have to agree with Grandmaster. If this was a small, select group of players, say, 6 - 8 at most, your idea would be workable. But when it is open to the world, like this would have to be, there are bound to be some players who either cannot or will not stay within the informally agreed-upon bounds.

Therefore the game will need some formalized rules, and some kind of manager(s) with authority to enforce those rules.

 

[ravensfire]

Grandmaster and Padma,

There is a way to enforce a rule, even with no manager. Everyone agrees to ignore the illegal post, or even the illegal poster.

It's tough, but it can be done. Usually a group effort to bring someone around will work. It'd be interesting to see that tried here.

Having a mod around to monitor for intentional disruption would be a good thing.

-- Ravensfire

 

[Grandmaster]

Padma (and other mods), just in case this qualifies as a breakage of site trolling or flaming rules, I am asking you to bear with me for a minute. I think I can trust you.

Raven, were you here for the Volcano Thread at the end of DG2? I don't believe you were. Allow me to tell you a little about it. One of the major participants in that thread was a poster named Sir John. Not a bad guy by any means, just a little different than the typical RPG poster.

By that time in the game, manager leadership was breaking down. Things had essentially degraded to being run by general consensus and unspoken rules. But some people didn't want to play by those rules.

Sir John began posting in the Volcano Thread in ways that would essentially fall under god-modding and the like. Things like (a) have a volcano erupt in the middle of nowhere and create a new island, then (b) claiming all the land (against our land rules), etc. Then other folks began to join in. People like Noldodan (again, a good person, but not the CivIII-RPG type) who used flying lions or something of the like to drop forces (where they elves? I forget) to wrest control of the island. Which would've been fine, if this was a fantasy RPG. But its a realistic RPG. And so it went against our unspoken rules.

Now, we tried long and hard to argue the point with Sir John (not so much with Noldodan) but couldn't get him to go along with the rules. Eventually, even Stuck_as_a_Mac got into the act in irritation, breaking the no-kill rule and striking down Sir John with a lightning bolt.

Basically, the point of this whole excercise has been to show you that no, we cannot trust people to follow common law without an executor of that law. We need managers.

 

[GenMarshall]

Originally posted by Grandmaster
Characters should die eventually. What I'm saying is this: you play as yourself. Your life span is like 2 months. After you die, a son/daughter/heir takes the characters place. For me it'd be:

Grandmaster of Nova Vaniria
Grandmaster II
Grandmaster III
Augustus Grandmasterus

And so on... my family continues on, even in death.... get it?

Oh, and death would be either natural, or from wounds in combat (decided by Conflict and Character together)

Oh great, Now Illbe seeing CivGeneral II and Mara Jade II . Though I am still against the character death thingy. I would like to see the character dynamics like in DG2 RPG. I dont want to be seeing the whole Dating/Marrage Rush like earlyer in this RPG.

 

[Stuck_as_a_Mac]

@The Volcano: He deserved it! He destroyed over half of Fanatica with that thing. Yes, Noldy used elves, but it was on eagle back they arived. And as for killing him, it was part of my Matrix plot.
Dont even get me started ont ehte time trouble.

Then there was his disregard of the rules in this DemoGame when he took a Helenatican Princess as his bride and claimed two children.


But back to the topic. We do need some laws, just for guidance. As for the rest, we dont really need them.

Now, whose going to give Karl Von Marx something to do in NoShoRet?

 

[Bootstoots]

Perhaps we should have one elected manager, elected for a one-month term. He would enforce a ruleset that we had agreed upon and would also resolve conflicts and the like. He could not institute rules without an approval poll but could interpret existing rules as he wished. The manager wouldn't be able to have an active character during his term in office, as it may cause problems to have someone rule on his own conflicts and rule interpretations.

Perhaps the manager could even be a temporary mod, without staff membership or the authority to ban anybody but would have the power to sticky, unsticky, open, and close threads and would have the power to edit a post so that it is within the rules or to post a Manager's Voice within the offending member's post. That would, of course, be entirely up to TF, however.

 

[Strider]

Making this a "free-run" RPG will never work. Can people survive without some form of goverment or leadership? No, even in the most earliest stages of humanity there were leaders. Even other mammals (wolfs & lions coming to mind) have some form of leadership. It would never work.

I think inorder to make the game truly fun, we will need a complex set of rules, but we should not require a person to know all of the rules. IE: Say a person only wants to partcipate in the land/conflict part of the RPG. They will then only be required to know that part of the rule system. They need not know of the business's or anything else.

I think a simple base ruleset is a defiant yes, but there should also be several other "tack-on" rulesets.

 

[ravensfire]

I see. Point taken. Very disappointing, but I appreciate the answer!

-- Ravensfire

 

[Strider]

So is everybody ok with this? Totally re-making the RPG?

 

[Grandmaster]

Raven: No problem.

Strider: Yes.

 

[Strider]

I'm pretty much waiting on Donovan to say yes, as he's the mod.

Also, I'm pretty much figuring that *if* he says yes, I'll be in charge of pretty much working on it.