What factions do you want to see in play at the start of the game?

[Dark Shadows]

The real question we all want to know is what factions do you want to see in play from the beginning of this relaunch of Midgard?

Well speaking for myself I would like to play (3) clans and I have three groups that I would like to choose from:

Group A: Naval based clan-
Buccaneers (Pirate), or Naval based SOA

Group B:
Bandit, or SOA

Group C:
Cymru, Seekers, or Cult of the Dark One

I would choose one from each one of the above groups to get my three clans, but I would also see how these factions are first designed for this game to see if they  fit the character of what all of these factions once were. I hold my options open, but I have to wait and see what the GM decides to do.

[Davin]

Yes, I'd like to know which factions players would like to see in the beginning, but I'll want more than just a few opinions.

FYI - we're including ships and naval support in the basic design, but I'm not planning on using any of it for a little while.  Clans aren't going to have the resources to build their own ships for a while and NPCs will be restricted to simple commercial ventures in the beginning just to keep the economy running.  That will give you time to build up your game resources and give me time to work on the naval programming.

Thus, in the beginning, we won't be having any naval factions (pirates, etc.) or other explicit naval activity.  We'll grow into that as the game grows.

[DreamWeaver]

For me I want to see what factions Davin will allow at the beginning and if he is going to make any redesign to any of them. I feel some of them need some redesign to make them more playable and fun to play within the game.

That being said if the Boda was redesigned as a Foot based faction (dropping the Mounted side), they might be fun to play. If that does happen then I would like to play in the Cymru, Seeker, or Cult. We need to know really which factions we are ging to be able to choose from to decide.

Now I am confused on something though. How many clans are we going to be allowed to play? Also is it just a $5.00 fee per turn/cycle cost, or is there other fees?

[Davin]

I'm thinking about the faction possibilities.

At present we're planning on allowing 3 "cousin" clans per player, as before, but we might consider adding more for a good reason (and if it won't upset the game balance).  I'm also considering allowing some extra clans for the beta play time so you don't have to start that with only your favorites.

However, you'll be happy to hear (if you haven't figured it out from other announcements) is that your play fees will be only $5.00/month/player for unlimited multi-clan game play (including our other game(s)).  However, for the time being I'm reserving judgement on special fees for "special actions" and combats, since those will require more GM time, but hopefully those will be much less frequent than they used to be.  (I'm trying to automate as many special action types as I can.)

[DreamWeaver]

Davin I think you should stick to the (3) Cousin rule, but honestly I think it should be $5 / clan. You need to make money on this to make it worth while. So if we can play 3x clans, then that is only $15.00 per month...that would be a good start and should give you a good measure of the work you will need to do to look at everything else. Have the player login to their account and then just manage each clan by their individual clan number.

[Davin]

From a profit perspective, that sounds like a good idea, but I'm opposed to it for several general reasons.  For one thing, per-turn (and similar) costs were common and expected in the old paper days, but I don't think they'd go over very well in the Internet Age.   I really want to encourage people to play, and I think that keeping a tight reign on how much it would cost them to have a lot of fun would be a great help in that department.  After all, consider all their choices for how they can play games these days and how much they cost.  We really need a lot of human players to make Midgard more than just an NPC-based game, so anything I can do to get signups is definitely important.  Also, I've already established this pricing structure when I brought Talisman Games to the modern era.  My operational game, Galac-Tac, is currently running using that model.  I'd rather not change the company-wide rules that are already in place.  If I can reasonably control how much personal GM time is required during play, the automated portions (after development) should be supportable with a simple monthly fee.

[DreamWeaver]

There will be Special Actions used and that is the only way to look into things, so maybe you charge a fee of $1.00 per Special Action used with a cap of (3) per clan. Not everyone will use SA and all three of them for each clan. So maybe you start at $1.00 per SA, but if you need be maybe you up the charge to $2.00. I want to make it worth your time and effort Davin.

[Dark Shadows]

So we start with a single Independent clan with no skills, then we can declare for a faction. Now if we are on this Beta Test Island, what happens to this Beta Test clan at the end? Do we keep this clan, drop it or what? If we drop it and were there throughout the whole Beta Test playtest, can we get some startup bonus for our new clan in the real game? What is your DM vision here for this?

[DreamWeaver]

That brings up another good question related to what your asking, how long do you think the Beta Test will last? Also after the Beta Test is over will that Island still be there to game on if we wanted to?

[Davin]

I'm expecting to keep the island around afterwards, so you can play on it if you like.  I'm going to be very lenient with my beta test players when making arrangements for standard play along whatever lines that you'd like to see.