Possible LotR Successor Game discussion thread

[Zim]

If we're starting without the smaller scale test game it would make the beginning game (with at least ten or so players) smoother.

Where's the fun in that?

[mini]

plus if we play a christian faction, we should RP to curry favour with the pope, or atleast avoid excomm.

Another incentive not to expand too much.

YLC: I agree england has better roster than france, which is why I will vote england.
I just proposed france as it has the best starting conditions for a larger playerbase.

If we start out with the Danes, you can only start off with a handful of player max.
I can't imagine the SS map right away, but the Dane starting position gives for some serious distances aswel?
Wehereas france/england are right in the middle of western europe.

[AussieGiant]

the process that flyd outlined is exactly what I was talking about.

Zim, honestly, I would get the rule set from KotR and make that a base. Controlling land is what KotR was all about and the Kaiser controlling it's distribution was well done and realistic.

YLC mentioned the idea of council sessions being heated and meaning something.

I can tell you, I never walked into the Diet in KotR without getting up to date on everything. If you didn't have your head screwed on straight you were going to get a pasting very quickly.

[Zim]

My impression was that most of the players were against switching back to the KotR rules set, at least going by posts here after it was brought up.

Is it just the House structure which you think would make for a better game?

I thought the way new Houses were set up midgame in LotR had great potential to be interesting. Sadly, we all decided to get along. Forcing people into certain Houses based on where they get adopted/born to wouldn't necessarily fix that problem if it were to repeat.

If we do bring back the older rules we'd need to think about what we'd do with rgbs. Would adoptions be banned unless they were to join the House of their potential adopter? Would someone marrying one of the King's daughter's get the chance to start a new House?

Perhaps we could do a poll to see which rule set people prefer.

Edit: I walked into a few Diets without really knowing what was happening, partly because I was new and many of the character dynamics escaped me. In fact, given what the Illuminati were doing behind the scenes the whole game, I can safely say I had no idea at all what was really going on.

[TinCow]

GM's Code:

You can please all of the people some of the time.
You can please some of the people all of the time.
You will piss off everyone eventually.

[AussieGiant]

What can I say.

I'm biased and I'm quantitatively sure KotR had more dust ups, wranglings, arguments, threats, venom, spiteful activity than LotR.

The general dynamic worked for a number of reasons.

Therefore I'm suggesting that it is used again, with some changes.

In this instances the method of edict and CA power tied into the game very well, plus how land was secured and distributed, plus the houses was very well done.

Adoption handling, no RBG's, Family Tree usage and a limited understandable rule set are all still arguably well done.

[Zim]

I recall a major problem in the lategame for KotR when players playing important fms became inactive (or rather worse, almost inactive, preventing us from finding new players to fill in). At least that was the view from House Swabia. Didn't Ruppel end up being the only active fm in Swabia?

I did strongly consider the KotR ruleset when it was first brought up. I'd gladly gm such a game, or one closer to LotR. I consider both to have the potential to make the new game great and I'll go for whatever most people prefer.

However, remember when I joined KotR. The Cataclysm was a brief high point of activity followed by a long slow down. I did not experience most of the things you're talking about. I experienced a House with no leader, a manufactured conflict I had no stake or real desire to join (for that matter, when I did try to participate in it I was rebuffed by the players who were already planning the end of the game) and a sudden decision to end the game that I didn't see coming.

I spent the latter months of KotR working with Matthias Steffen to save Outremer (the best part for me, rivaling the Swabian rebellion) and sharing joking complaints with some of my fellow new players about how the Swabian leader was always absent.

The beginning months of LotR, on the other hand, saw a ton of scheming and constant changes in the relationships between my character and those of players such as deguerra, TheFlax, YLC, Tristan, Rossahh, and Smowz (listing only the newer players since I've noted some of the more veteran players seemed not to have known just how much was going on outside of their own admirable attempts to push the game along). I suspect that things might have done much better in the mid-late game had it not been so hard to fight a civil war, and if active players did not drop out without warning (myself included for those months I had no working computer).

I read most of the links in KotR's history thread, and I do think the game's "active period" was longer than LotR's, for various possible reasons. I also agree the Diets were more interesting, and we were much too cooperative in LotR. I think it's important to investigate why that's so. If it turns out that scrapping the LotR rules wholesale and taking up the KotR rules then I'm all for it. If people would rather keep what they like from LotR (flexible Houses, rgbs, etc.) and change the parts they felt hindered the game I'm all for that as well.

I guess what I'm getting at is that KotR does not hold any special magic for me that made it better, largely because I'm not a KotR vet. I joined the game during its waning period, when it's rules were no longer enough to help conflict along and instead events like Siegfried's planned death and the Cataclysm and everything that resulted from it caused most of the conflict. That is, outside forces.

So, for me and I suspect many of the players that weren't in KotR, some convincing is needed. Preferably a serious debate. If such arises I'll gladly start a poll to decide which rules to use. We could begin by asking TinCow to move the longer posts you and Ituralde made in the OOC thread supporting the KotR ruleset here.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Already seeing an upside to this conversation. I'm starting to remember those German names again.

[TheFlax]

GM's Code:

So very true.


Now, from what I read, most people seem to want a compromise between KotR and LotR. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

I'll talk about Houses in an instant, first I want to talk about Ramses' proposition that votes be tied to land. While this has some merit, making land much more important and promoting conflict over land. I think it takes out too many newcomers out of the equation. I think it would be much more sensible to have some sort of system where the number of landed vassals are more important. Not only does land remain important, but people also become an important resource. I'm thinking it would make for a fun game if people had to fight for vassals and loyalty would become rather important.

If I remember correctly, LotR wanted to do that, but by tying voting power to stats, even the people with the highest ranks (like deguerra) never got high enough stats to benefit from their rank.

Now for the Houses, perhaps a mix of established "permanent" Houses and other more fluid Houses could be established. So lets say we go with the family tree being split into Houses, like KotR. We could also have RGBs who form small units of their own, similar to Houses, and who can pledge themselves to a House for a certain amount of time, at the cost of the established noble House. Just an idea and it could be more refined, it also does not remedy what to do with adoption. (I guess they could be treated case by case.)