New Faction Design - Swashbucklers

[Dark Shadows]

Well, that's certainly worth considering, but I think later rather than immediately.

Yes, I want to have both mercenary and naval factions come into play eventually, but my immediate worry is having enough players to "fill out" all the factions we've got before we start introducing new ones.  Once we've got enough clans playing in each faction to give them all a reasonable membership, then I'd like to open up the opportunity to create more of them, such as Merk Verk, SoA, B&F, Heretic, etc.

If you really want to start with something else (and a naval faction gives me whole new starting headaches), can you at least convince me that the membership of the other factions won't suffer given the relatively small number of players that seem to be interested in the revival?

Davin,

I understand what your saying, but I am defining this faction here in now to get the basics laid down to plan for the future of the development of this faction. I like to play 'Naval' based play, but I understand that you're not seeking to work all that out for gameplay in the beginning. I also understand that the Skill System is another area you do not wish to stand up from the beginning and plan on considering doing something with it later on.  Plus your planning on selectively only going to start the game with just the following factions:'Imperials', 'Boda', Getham','Roder','Banner Religion','Gift Religion', and 'Ring".  You have cut out all the other factions that were played, and you want anyone that wants to play to 'Just' play one of those listed factions.  So you have started these redesign threads of them, otherwise, you would be hard-pressed to get many people to play some of them.

So what will you do if after you start your game and get your factions stood up and then when you open up the game to other factions and players abandons these factions to play and start up new ones? They will take their clans and 'undeclare' for the old factions, and then stay Independent for 12 turns/cycles (a real year) to start up playing in factions they want to play in. Then you might end up with dead factions with a few Ghost players playing less than a handful of clans. We have seen that before within the game. I would think to allow the players to play in factions that they want to play in and these paying players would be more important to the game. You're never going to keep people playing in just these 7 factions, you're trying to force the issue and that may end badly for you and the game.

You're the GM and the owner, and what you want is what you will get. I should point out that to have a successful product, you might have to give a little so that the future players also get what they want too.  Speaking just for myself, the factions that I played n that I enjoyed were; SOA, Bandits, Buccaneers, Cymru, Seekers, Heretic religion that in one game was to be the Seeker religion and The Cult of the Dark One in another. Now for me, all of those are not here so I have to choose from one of these (7) or remain Independent. Even then the Skill System isn't in place to begin with either, so playing an Independent is really hard with little to no benefit or future.
What would you do if most people just played only Independents and didn't declare for any of the factions? You keep talking about the factions not having enemies, well you have taken all of the Bad Guys out of the game and want to make these (7) fight each other.  

I think as long as you have players within a faction then it is ok, you might find that you only have a handful of players in each faction for a long time. Rember as long as you have paying customers playing in the game, then it is ok.  Many of the people I have played with based themselves in a single city and just worked on that same city. They would interact with others that they played with and usually they might work together. I don't know what to tell you here, I don't think it is needed to force players to just play in these core factions will make you have a successful long-lasting game. I think you will loose players that way. I think you should open up a couple of other factions to be included as well too. Adding other factions will give more possibilities were players have other choices to work with.  I am not sure what to do here, I just want to enjoy a game that I have played and loved. I am one voice and others would hopefully speak their mind as well too.