Yes, but instead of having 4 different sets of capture the standard going on with hardly any talking going back and forth most of the time, there would be more "team mates" and more strategy involved.
Another idea is to put merchant and herald together. Then put Knight with watcher/warmaster. Herald and merchant would have lots more to do working together then.
W/W/K - always at war with trib/savant and nexus/syndi
That way all 3 factions besides herald/merchant could never really hold alliances to the other 2
I was simply thinking along the lines of with such a small pbase there is often only 1v1 cabal warfare going on now and it gets much more interesting when there are multiple members from each side on. They can either choose to help out their mates or not, but there will be much less focus on simply player A taking a standard and player B returning that standard over and over.
Yes, but instead of having 4 different sets of capture the standard going on with hardly any talking going back and forth most of the time, there would be more "team mates" and more strategy involved.
Another idea is to put merchant and herald together. Then put Knight with watcher/warmaster. Herald and merchant would have lots more to do working together then.
W/W/K - always at war with trib/savant and nexus/syndi
That way all 3 factions besides herald/merchant could never really hold alliances to the other 2
watcher with knight? your taking rich developed rps and just duct taping them together and saying look, this plane will fly...
My watcher fights some knights, had shifting relaitons with several cabals. If you reduce the factions to just 3 then your limiting the scope of interactions between cabals.
It is a waste of my time to fabricate a character and its RP in my mind and bring it to FL.
Why? Because Aabahran dictates role play as much as she embraces it.
The original Idea, appears quite fetching to a small but dedicated player base.
Maybe I missed something, but many have stated that this would strangle/curtail certain role play angles, especially where cabal warfare is involved.
My mind saw the Idea from a different angle, let me elaborate;
I do not think of warfare and strife in Aabahran as an avoidable thing. Its in the Help History scroll, there can be no lasting peace.
I see this as we would have a three way power struggle for controlling leverage in our world, reflected by who controls the cities in which the people live, all of the cities would be under the rule of one of the three.
Below that characters struggle to bring forth their own special flavor and perspective by championing their cause through a sub cabal that remains in a perpetual state of war with its rivals to claim lands to further strengthen the sub faction itself. Lands would no longer be Savant Lands, they would be Forsaken/Savant Lands, a fellow Forsaken could move his armies across these lands in order to empower his own nefarious ideals.
The question Pali raises about Tranquility Healers is a valid one, but not one that does not already exist in the world. Few are the choices one has. But Mysterum offers the greatest chance at finding personal tranquility and would still do the same with this change.
Thanks for the comments @Fool_Hardy. Keep in mind that the original post is pushing eight years now, so it could certainly use some refinement. I should probably clean up the original post and repost. Would anyone be interested in seeing a newer version?
As for character RP flexibility, it would be different from the current setup, but the overall angles that could be worked are literally infinite. This is no real change. If you want your archetype trope, you can still do it here.
For example, if you want to do the bounty-hunter thing, it can still be done. You are still in a gray legal area, but in this version, you are working more with the government than with the underworld. Black ops instead of mafia, albeit the mafia is actually part of the government in this version. Slightly different feeling, yes. Limiting? Not really.
The big boon however, is that you have much greater RP potential with other characters. The whole aspect of dealing with internal cabal affairs, and some external, through RP will be a very positive change.
So, while you have about the same flexibility in creating your character's RP, you have more options to actually use that RP meaningful. Although this is a net gain, having some use for RP is a huge gain in an area we have problems with.
We don't currently see a ton of RP inside or even between cabals...most RP is centered on the individual (with a cabal for flavor) and the rest of cabal interaction is simply PK. We can make major gains here.
Concerning @Pali's old specific argument for the tranquil healer (pure pacifist in this example), I would suggest no cabal. You cannot have true tranquility while being politically active in the world in any meaningful way. Does this effectively limit the healer? Yes. Are pacific healers already extremely limited in today's FL? Yes. Yes, perhaps you lose some PvE ability because you don't have cabal skills, but since you are hoping to play a non-PK character anyways, you are already severely limited. As I have said before in more recent threads, I would argue this is more of a weakness in the healer class.
The other argument was concerning limiting cabal flexibility. That is, being able to declare vendetta/trade/etc. I'll be blunt, the current system doesn't do much. There are some limited mechanic gains, but there isn't any significant RP done here. Every cabal has natural enemies and friends and usually the pacts are quite static, and even if they do change, it isn't a major thing. The cabals themselves are already very static.
It would be very nice if we could have a flexible political system, but in practice, we don't have one. If defining the cabal roles more clearly and reasonably will open up the game in both PK and RP, that is worth the loss of a token amount of inter-cabal flexibility. Since it is a 3-way setup, there will be a natural political course that follows the relative cabal power distribution.
Remember, subcabals will be competing with each other too, so you lose some flexibility in external relations for some internal flexibility. It still a minor amount though and the cabals are quite static in this system. If anyone can figure out how to make politics (cabal relationships) more flexible and meaningful in FL's system, please, start a thread!
In my defense it was posted during the time of transition. Croyvern to Fool_Hardy. The forum became inaccessible to me for a time, and I was not banned, just lost, like Croyvern among the abyss where Malch's demons foiled my return.
The system as proposed takes your align/ethos and pretty much tracks you into a specific path. That is because the (sub)cabal ideologies are differentiated based on align/ethos...different aligns/ethos are what make each (sub)cabal different, so there are natural fits for most align/ethos combinations.
The net effect of this is that you make your cabal choice at character creation, giving you little cabal 'growth' potential during your character's active playing life. To overcome this, I propose allowing characters to be 'unaligned' until such a time that they join a feeder clan which then sets their alignment appropriately to the relevant subcabal, within race/class restrictions of course.
The good point of this is that you don't have to front load all of your character build/rp decisions at character generation. That means character generation is shorter (always good, esp. for new players) and allows for some dynamic character growth based on in game experiences.
This would appease both those who want to have a clearly defined ethos/align for cabal purposes AND those who want some character ideological freedom after generation.
The problem there would be what is to be done regarding various equipment, abilities, mob interactions and so forth that are hardcoded to check align/ethos of a character. Alignment in particular in FL has always had a strong metaphysical aspect to it, in that it is a tangible, real aspect to a being that can be magically sensed and cause interactions of various sorts (anti-evil items burning you because your soul is dark). Part of the fun I had playing Teldrin recently was experimenting with playing a character who was evil by FL's standards, but not by real-world standards: he was a nice guy, happy to help people out, wanted only the best for everyone, and spent his time trying to save the world from approaching calamity... but he was a necromancer and made use of black magic, and that is enough for him to be evil as defined within Aabahran.
It is the metaphysical nature of alignment and ethos in D&D-inspired worlds like FL that a lot of people tend to overlook when discussing the topic, as they instead focus on the ethical aspects, but it's the metaphysics that allow entire races to be good or chaotic or evil right from the get-go - there is magic of a sort at work within beings that pushes them in various directions. To change this aspect of character creation is to change a fairly important part of the world's lore and how magic functions within it.
It is a waste of my time to fabricate a character and its RP in my mind and bring it to FL.
Why? Because Aabahran dictates role play as much as she embraces it.
I have to disagree. I always fabricate a characters role play before the character is even made. My character is the way he is and changes based on events that unfold in game. Your experiences from birth mold you, not just jumping into Aabrahan at 13 years old.
7 hours ago, Celerity said:
The net effect of this is that you make your cabal choice at character creation, giving you little cabal 'growth' potential during your character's active playing life. To overcome this, I propose allowing characters to be 'unaligned' until such a time that they join a feeder clan which then sets their alignment appropriately to the relevant subcabal, within race/class restrictions of course.
Role play starts at creation, not when you join a cabal. Alignment and ethos should be huge facters in your role play from the start. How do you role play a character who has neither?
What about characters that don't wish to be in a cabal? Would they get the option to choose at creation?
Alignment and ethos can be changed with role play as your character experiences different events that make them question things.
Overall I like your idea after reading it. For the most part it makes sense when you read it. However, restricting align/ethos so much kills it for me.
I do not believe in the born evil/good philosophy. There are a plethora of individual choices made by the self that cause ones behaviors to be considered good or evil.
I believe alignment and ethos, like everything else in this game should be a number. Albeit a very high number as we seem to like high numbers.
Once chosen your ethos is this set number, that is affected by your actions. If you defend against raids, or run errands for shop keepers, your ethos number will rise. If this is not pleasing because you desire to play a chaotic character, then RP the chaotic and start breaking laws and watch your ethos number fall.
The same is true for good and evil. Once chosen the number should be set. Affected by the actions of the character. If a neutral hunts nothing but good characters his entire life, was he truly neutral? No his number would have dropped straight to hell with his soul. Same is true for the evil that walks around doing good in the world. Not that you can never do those nice things, like saving the kings daughter if your evil, you just have to follow it up by murdering his wife. to keep the numbers in check.
@Fool_Hardy it looks like you are arguing for relative alignment...kind of like real life. What you do determines who you are. Such alignment is objectively immeasurable, making it all but worthless for this game.
FL operates under an objective absolute alignment system. No matter how many good things you do, your soul was stamped with 'evil' by 'the powers that be'. This means things are innately good or evil (very different from real life). Good and evil in FL are not the same as good and evil in real life.
@Zavero @PaliWhat I meant by unaligned was to set it at a default of neutral/neutral if your race/class allows it (or whatever your race/class constricts you to). A drow would still be evil. A human warrior could (optionally) start out at neutral align neutral ethos and when the warrior chooses to commit to a path, the align/ethos change occurs (along with being zapped by equipment, whatever). You can always set your align/ethos at creation as you do now -- this is an optional thing. If the warrior wanted to be a trib, he could set his ethos to lawful. Think of it like adventurer, but for align/ethos rather than class.
A similar system could be done for religion as well, allowing you to specify (convert to) a religion when it becomes meaningful to you rather than front-loading the decision.
I'm very flexible on the align/ethos for the different subcabals as suggested here. I consider them a minor part of the suggestion, and if they need to be opened up, I'm ok with that.