Roleplaying as cities

[atkrye]

(This is just my opinion. If you disagree, please dont shout at me... steel...)
Put simply, the cities of this server dont roleplay enough in my opinion. There is very little diplomacy or trading or (and most importantly!) war. There is the occasional skirmish but no all out war efforts as would be expected in a world of independent cities.
The issue underlying this is that cities dont play as what they claim to be. If your city follows the evil god of war, then why arent your members going out and taking the heads of foes in his honor. Raids, sieges and spontaneous fights should be expected from these cities.
If you follow a good god, then do good work. Help new players out, offer them gifts, help where help is needed and protect the week. War is fine if you can justify it. Obviously if your good your not going to go pillage villages, but you would obviously fight with evil cities to stop their raids and such.
Cities should also be working on making trade links- allowing a city next to a sea to import fish and sell it in a city that is in the centre of a land mass, whilst the city in-land would supply bread. Stuff like this all adds to the realism.
Alliances are also key. Good cities should never have specific enemies- your good after all, unless the enemies are purely evil. However, good cities should make an effort to get good and neutral cities on their side in the aim of the greater good- an idea that you should take all measures available in order to stop conflict in the long term, even if it involves conflict in the short term (e.g. killing those silly evil guys).
Neutral cities should try to avoid taking sides in the good/evil conflict and fight for their true allies- the ones who offer them money, the ones who can protect them, the ones who are friendly to them, and even the ones who rule them (e.g. if an evil one declares war and you surrender).
If this gets going, it would be a great kinda Game of Thrones or general rpg feel
Thanks for reading

 

[Kruziik]

I think once we've got a more stable player base and can implement taxes in most cities (assuming mayors want to) it'd be rather cool to have a map somewhere showing the territory owned by each town, initially it'd just be their city limits, but they could conquer other towns and receive tribute from those towns to return said territory or become a vassal.

Not sure how we could do this, it's just a thought but with a moderator essentially being referee it could work, although it would require people to RP and deal with the consequences, win or lose! Also there should be maximum tributes, probably fairest based on size of town (10rads/plot claimed ) etc.

Trade I do agree with although it's hard when people are meeting in port silver every 2mins to exchange trade in a bit to get rich and found their own towns

 

[atkrye]

I believe it is possible to have an entry to a worldgaurd region-the city's area perhaps which says Welcome To [Ascension Heights] territory. or if your evil Something like "Theres No Turning Back"
Half your a moderator, go for it

 

[Steelcryo]

War will be coming when towny fixes their war mode

 

[atkrye]

sweet

 

[Megan]

The reason why this does not happen currently is in my belief because of limitations, greed, and fear or the players. When limited of where you can build, players often are willing to jump aboard the first town that looks decent and will claim them. Mayors in turn, because of greed, often recruit anyone they can at first to get a town started. They don't require much of the people they are recruiting or have many standards from their citizens until they get their feet on the ground. After the town is on it's way, the mayors often wish to protect it from any grief or harm, and set some of the most strict settings possible - making raiding and combat almost impossible. The majority of the towns are not towns at all, they are a group of people all working for themselves instead of for the group as a whole. This makes any town decisions hard to make as people really prefer to be left to do their own thing - making alliances, wars, and trade nearly impossible, because the others will just simply not participate. Another reason why not much rp is happening is because of fear. Fear of making someone mad and getting banned because they are a poor sport or they cry about it and throw a fit.

I am currently trying to work with the admin team to make ways that we can bring these aspects in the game. It's not easy because we as well need to keep the rest of the world in mind and many of my thoughts have been shot down. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them, as I am slowly running out of creative juice and could use a free glass or two...

 

[Steelcryo]

It's not that we're thinking of the rest of the world, we just like disagreeing with you and ruining your ideas megan

Nah but seriously, we're working on it but its hard especially when players don't want to RP. We can't force it on people or we'd have very few players left.

 

[Legion]

Well it is my belief (i dont know that much about towny so if im wrong tell me) that with the way towny works it is difficult to set up RP as it takes a while for a mayor to get his feet on the ground.
So when i build my town, i will be extremely slective of who i allow in and will require that the members participate in RP and town projects.

When i finish the wall at fortress naught i will begin construction of this town.
I plan for it to be a major RP center, and ive been talking a little to half about it.

Until then, i think dungeons and RP events are the way to go.
Fortress naught event isnt to far away, and there are some dungeons in the works.

As for towns, i think we may just need to wait until people have amassed enough resources to begin other projects or leave their town and start a new one.
Also megan i agree with you but i think that calling it greed for mayors to allow anyone in is too strong a word. It isnt really greed they just need more people to claim land and to get themselves on their feet.
Greed has a very negative conotation.

 

[atkrye]

We do need to be a little more lax with rule breaking. Murder definately shouldnt be banneable or even punishable by admins. It should be freely done, on the grounds that you make enemies at your own risk, and your actions represent your city. Hopefully an enviroment would be created where people dont kill each other in fear of angering their leaders cos they started a war.
Similarly, i feel thievery should be entirely possible. If someone takes your stuff, you should have locked your chest. Its pretty much your fault- you have the means to protect your items, so why go cry to the admins when you dont use it.
This would take away the factor of fear your talking about and create an all-round pro rp enviroment

 

[atkrye]

Also steel, you dont have to force rp on people, but it would be nice if we had rp rules- where a lot of justice- stealing and murdering especially- is dealt with by cities, like in rl, as apposed to the ban hammer

 

[Legion]

With stealing from chests i agree with you, assuming that the player who stole will have RP and social consequences rather than server consequences. I mean if you are a known thief youll get kicked out of your town. Thats punishment enough and is RP-like.

As for killing, there has to be a line, as there is a line between killing 1 person on accident/for fun and sitting at town spawns with a diamond sword and spawn-owning.

 

[atkrye]

also vigilante justice > and legion, i just remembered something from an old server. You can use world edit to create and area free of pvp. We could apply that to each town's spawn (probably would need a mod dedicated to looking after moving them around with the spawn) in like a 10x10 area so there is no more spawn camping.

 

[Legion]

Yes, most actions such as stealing, minor murder, slander, general dickishness etc etc should have social punishments rather than banning and kicking.
Such as:
You steal from one and now no one likes you
You kill someone and start a war and no one likes you
You are a dick to every one and no one likes you

You see if no one likes you, you are excluded from towns, RP, and social interaction in general.

 

[atkrye]

Exactly. Therefor criminal activity is fine. You just have to be sneaky about it. In fact evil towns would be great for harbouring criminals

 

[Legion]

Yup, but remember it is a fine line to walk and you may unknowingly take the one way street to banland from which there is no return.

 

[Mrbubbles1951]

yeah i was probably the first person to be effected by said kicked out of town
i was banished from ascension for pushing someone of a cliff
its all fine now tho

 

[Legion]

Indeed. And i think thanndreli was having similar troubles.
Not to mention Lutheranus.

 

[InfamousPride]

I agree with Legion completely. I have had several skirmishes with the pirates of shipwreck cove but no technical war. Mostly because I was told war is not allowed... but that's another story. Our skirmishes are the only real action happening RP based that I have heard of on the server currently. Come on guys live it up a little

 

[atkrye]

ascension and saline creek had a little war. We dealt with it brilliantly aswell saline was losing, and asked for peace. On the grounds that we were winning, we agreed on the conditions that we got 32gold reparations for our losses, and we were allowed to build an embassy in Saline. A very Secure Embassy Little rp events like this add a huge feeling of realism

 

[billybob_579]

Yes, I like the concept of more RP interaction between towns on a whole. A.H. and Saline Creek are a good example of this, I believe. We now essentially "occupy" that town, as we're larger, wealthier, and more powerful. They're fully aware that we can wage war on them with or without a towny command.

By extent, is a towny command really needed to go to war? Honestly? If two towns decide they want war, can they not just turn PvP on in their towns and go at it? Aurolus and Shipwreck Cove did this recently, and I thought it played out brilliantly as it was decided on part of both parties and was RPed well.

A third thing I've noticed is that some towns will form "alliances" with one another but such things dont actually have any meaning whatsoever. If an alliance is made, it should have clear and specific meaning that is documented either in a private message on the forums, or in a section of its own on the forums. But it should not be "A.H. has allied Aurolus" without any real implications. Some examples of things an alliance could stand for are; trade pacts (specific trades carried out regularly between towns), defense treaties (if one town is attacked, the other must help), a "coallition"(two towns will function as one, discussion decisions together and acting in unison), mutual war declaration (two towns agree to declare war on a shared rival).
These are just some of the things that come to mind, I'm sure there are plenty others that can/will be done.

So, yeah. On another note, if there are any multiple-town RP events (player-planned or admin-planned) in the works, Ascension Heights would likely be glad to act as a host (if it involves burning us to the ground, we might say no). Thanks for reading.