Possible LotR Successor Game discussion thread

[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.