A New History of Midgard?

[DreamWeaver]

vadersThe point is that it is a total redesign and what was the history as Davin has said is wiped clean and rewritten. Thus in this timeline as I have presented The Imperial Republic came from Midgard and did not invade. All that previous history never happened, it is a rewrite to correct some issues.

Also the Skelts are the primitive native peoples in the southern half of Midgard mostly in the great forests. The barbarians are their cousins and yes they are invaders as well.

[DreamWeaver]

My attempt at the history rewrite was to stop the issues of the past! Basically the fact that Davin is limiting players in the beginning to only play the (7) core factions, it will mean that it will be "Dog Pile on the Imperials". Now Davin has already stated that he is taking away the Preserv's 25.0 Walls/Towers. He further stated that every pop center would be little more than ruins with almost no defences at all. Plus the super resources that the Imperium had in the past would be greatly sized down, which means the imperials would be vulnerable.  Add into that that the Barbarians are NOT a option to play at the beginning, then the only bad guys left are the Imperials.  There are NO Bandits, No Pirates, No Barbarians, No SOA, No MV, No B&F, No Serkeanar, No Cult, No Cymru, No Seekers, and so on. He might have some NPC clans but basically it is just the (7) factions to play in: Imperials, Boda, Gethem, Roder, Banner, Gift, and Ring.

So whom do you think all these Combat Junkies are going to fight? The Gift and Ring players are not going to fight each other, maybe the Banner might raddle their swords a bit. The Getham are going to try to spread their control, but the Boda and Roder are going to go after the only Invader. Add to that Davin doesn't have either the Skill System or Naval system in place so you can either build stuff or fight. Most people are not pure Builders, instead they will want active players to fight against.

I am just trying to set up a history that will remove that whole hatred. Most likely we will have to suffer through 2 years before we can start up other factions again. Remember the process is have 10+ Players with 20+ clans that must declare as Independent (declared for the new faction to the GM but NO benefits at all) and they must all play for (12)  cycles (that is one year) before the faction even comes live.  So most likely all of these former factions that are not the 7 core factions will have to pay to play 3+ years before their factions come live. If we leave it as it is and do NOT redesign the History and Factions, this game will fail before it even starts.

We have to redesign the History and Factions for the benefit of the game otherwise the game will be dead on arrival. The redesigns I have put forward, I think would make each faction very much fun to play. I still have the concerns about not putting in place all the Bad guys and at least make them NPCs to start. Davin is trying to force the issue to have each of these 7 core factions fully staffed/populated before he will allow others factions to be considered.

[Davin]

I'm not trying to stomp on all the expansions completely, just keep them in reserve for a time when the game is running well again.  I expect to have plenty of minor NPC opponents (bandits, etc.) to start with to give everyone a chance to flex their military muscles early on.

I also don't plan on requiring the traditional process for starting up new factions early in the game.  Once we get the starting factions "filled out" I'd like to allow for new ones to arise fairly easily for a while, until we have a number of choices again.  So given that we get a bunch of players jumping in and having fun, a few new factions may arise almost spontaneously without having to wait for long game years.

I agree that the overall hatred of the Imperials is likely to be a stumbling block, and softening that attitude in some fashion I think would make the game more fun.  If the Imperials were more on a equal footing with the other factions, we shouldn't end up with the "dog pile" behavior and they needn't be someone that everyone must attack.  Don't you agree?

We spoke elsewhere about combining capabilities of several old factions into the base seven to begin with.  If we do that, it might provide opportunities later (when we have plenty of clans in them) for such factions to go through internal schisms (along those same lines) and split into new factions that might be similar to some of the older ones.  This could be worked into pretty much any new history we come up with.

Comments?

[DreamWeaver]

What happens later on when you give the ok to start new factions and people abandon the core (7) factions to spin up new ones? What will you do then, if there ends up with only a handful of players and clans in the core factions and new factions spin up? I understand what your trying to do but I don't feel you will get what you're hoping will happen. Midgard player-ship is a rare breed and it has never had the mega appeal of great numbers. Now those that do play are loyal and are willing to pay and play with great numbers, but  what does that mean in the over all numbers of active clans? That I can not tell as I have never had real game access to those stats. What I can speak on is what I have seen from and been able to do. I have managed to bring live (2) new factions, and was bring live a 3rd as well if Zan of Midgard USA hadn't past away. That group of players that I was connected to were all very active and we were all playing Cymru, Buccaneers, SOA, Skelts and Seakings all at the same time.  Also I had enough players/clans to also bringing live another Religious faith as well, we were (2) cycles away of reaching Live status.  Now I do know that the rest of the factions were starving for active Player and Clans. Basically other than seniors, in most cases many factions were almost empty. So what will you do if that happens again? Will you let players play more than the 3 clans that has been the traditional approach? In Zan's game, he allowed people to play (9) per player, BUT towards the end he allowed a number of us to play more than that. In the end I was playing 14 clans, plus a number of cities too. I was not the only one doing that either.

[Davin]

What happens later on when you give the ok to start new factions and people abandon the core (7) factions to spin up new ones?

It may turn out to be a big problem, but I'm trying to avoid that in at least a couple of different ways.  First, I wouldn't want to start new factions if the old ones weren't populated and stable enough to withstand taking a large chunk away from them (and hopefully a reasonable number wouldn't want to move).  Then, I want to make the original factions fun enough to play, with enough internal variety, that few people will WANT to jump to a new faction.

If players wanted to leave the starting factions in droves, then they obviously aren't fun enough to be playing in.  I see two possible ways to remedy that: (1) make the starting factions so fun to play that not very many would be tempted to leave them, and (2) if they can't be made fun enough then don't start them up at all in the first place.  IOW, if you all don't think that the XYZ faction won't be fun to play if there are dozens of other choices available, then why should we have it to begin with?  Wouldn't it be better if we just threw it away and started with a "more fun" faction in the beginning?

If anyone can point out a faction (after we make any improvements to it) that they wouldn't rather play over one of the others that we're not starting with, then should we not just destroy it (in the cataclysm, if appropriate) and have one of the others rise up to take its place in the aftermath?

I think that's kinda the point about redesigning the way factions work, and their world history, so we end up with something fun to start with rather than something that will just be abandoned later.

So what do you think won't be fun to play, and is there anything we can do about it either way?  I'm not married to those seven specifically - I just thought it was a good place for discussions to start.  And as I also mentioned, then why not (if we keep them at all) add fun things to them so people will want to play them and keep playing them even with alternatives?

[Imperium]

The asteroid struck the world south of Midgard and presumably on the continent of Kalamar. A score or so of smaller asteroids struck the Midgard continent. One, striking in southern Midgard, caused a massive earthquake, the land mass upon which the great Southern Imperial Preserve stood, sliding into the ocean within minutes. Scores of ancient cities crumbled or were completely destroyed.

Worse was to come.

Following the destruction by Gift and Boda engineers of the last Imperial Preserve in the month following, the skies darkened and an almost endless winter descended on the remaining people. For five years they struggled to survive made worse when the Blood and Fire descended upon the few remaining Gift enclaves, putting them to the fire. With their remaining forces too scattered to offer any effective support, the other One True God religions could only look inwards all the while owing revenge. Thus the remnants of the Gift Religion accepted the offer from the Getham Family to join with them.

It is into this world, a world of competing factions and shifting balances, that you now find yourself. The Imperials, their Preserves gone and many of their Forts battered, are in decline. The Boda and Roder Families struggled in the post asteroid strikes to hold on to what remained of their own holdings (albeit the Boda took out several smaller Imperial towns early on). The remaining One True God religions have stabilised what they have but are yet to exact their promised revenge. As for the Blood and Fire, their forces still range from their fortress of Fanglan. Providing support to their other holdings and descending with wrath and fire upon unbelievers.

[Imperium]

So firstly, I'm a bit of a traditionalist. I don''t see what's inherently wrong with the original plotline, but I have created this scenario to change events from the asteroid strike onwards, with the following goals:

a. remove the Imperial strength of numerous Preserves and Forts all at either wall level 25 or 10.

b. provide within the scenario a greater level of destruction so that most (not all) cities are justifiably no higher than level 3.

c. Gotten rid of the Gift Religion (in the three versions of the game I have played, they are always the least supported in regards player base), but brought into play as hopefully a player run faction, the Blood and Fire. The Banner and Ring players should have their blood boiling to exact revenge on the B&F, especially since their great city of Fanglan survives.

d. The Gift embedded within the Getham offer interesting possibilities for those wanting an alternate to continual warfare. The Getham would love some of the Gift abilities to build, especially when they start reconstructing and building upon, their rod network for trade.

e. as mentioned, the Blood and Fire would be in play, and doing what they do best. The Boda would be supporting the Ring against them as one of their factional goals.

[Imperium]

Next post (possibly tomorrow) would be my thoughts on the Imperials in this post asteroid environment.

[Davin]

Would your version of the B&F be player-run, or an "evil empire" opponent for everyone to fight against?

[DreamWeaver]

Wow...Brian.....Gggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Kill off the Gift!!!

Ok let me point out a number of points:

a) Davin has already stated, that he is not going to include the Hospital city building within the game.

b) The Serkeanar do not exist in this version of his Midgard

c) Being a Traditionalist, the Gift before Zan were both Construction and Healing, Zan changed that. My description redesign gave back to the Gift the Healing skills. If the Gift are gone then there would be no current Healing ability within the game.

d) The Gift building bonus was based on some God gift of Faith as it was explained to me by Zan, being a former Gift #3 senior. Having the Getham somehow gain that would be wrong, as any clan that has retainers within Unit #0 gain a 2x bonus. So what would the Getham then gain? At game start the Skill system will not yet be in place so what would then be the bonus?

e) The Getham the game's money bankers, shop keepers, would now also be the city builders too. Oh exciting, I can see the lines forming now to staff that faction out now. It might work, but you would need to expand of that a bit more.

f) Not everyone in this game wants to play Combat junkies, some players like to do other things that don't fit into the Old Games Midgard Wars. Brian the reason why the Cymru were so successful, was because 16+ players walked away from the Gift and Boda and went south. We had 16 active players and like 36+ active Cymru declared clans within Kalmar. These same players also played: Buccaneers, SOA, Seakings Barbarians, Skelt Barbarians, and we were (2) Cycles away from standing up another new religion "Seekers of Faith" - based on worship of the Old Gods which Moorlock was one of them. (Moorlock was one of the Old Gods and he was the God of Knowledge). In the next two versions these same players aided in standing up the Seekers of Knowledge, that were based with Kalmar and southern Midgard. We were also extremely close to bringing live the religion of The Cult of the Dark One (The Dark One was Moorlock). Then there were those of us that were also trying to bring live the Bandits as a faction.

g) Davin does not plan on having Barbarians, Bandits, Pirates, Heretics, and B&F as live PC factions in the beginning of the game. They might show up as NPC clans to hunt down, but not active factions with abilities.

h) The Skill system will not be in place at the beginning of game play.

I) The Naval systems play will not be in place at the beginning of game play.

j) Davin has stated that most cities will be ruins and very few will be declared to a faction. It will be almost a total rebuild for these many population centers. We have even started talking about what makes up an: village, town, or city.