Did RTW kill PBM?

**Tricky Lady** · 10-28-2004, 21:39

I was wondering why all the PBMs seem to die a silent death so early (only one month after the release)?
Initially I thought that the PBM-ing would soon take off again, but -alas!- this seems not to be the case: I see few PBM threads and the few threads remain without replies for many days...
What happened?
Are we all already so bored with RTW?
Are we too disappointed about the game?

I must admit that I feel a bit ... meh about the new PBM system... It is just difficult to me to get the feel of a faction when you just play 10 years "randomly". I just can't seem to get into a faction or care enough to do well when I play a PBM campaign (okay, I only played one, lol).

...perhaps I should download the Brutii campaign and continue that game.... but I haven't had enough time to finish my own imperial campaign (with the Brutii too)

.... *sigh*

Any opinions?

**econ21** · 10-28-2004, 23:27

Well, you could extend the 10 year rule - there's no reason it should be fixed in stone.

PBMs only took off sometime after MTW came out. In a way, it's natural that people - like you said yourself - want to focus on their own solo campaigns. I gather they are rather long affairs! Then they may want to play other factions etc. PBMs were in part an attempt to do something different after people had squeezed most of the enjoyment out of the conventional SP game. Maybe things will pick up in a few months.

Less optimistically, PBMs were getting rather quiet before RTW came out. I guess people move on - perhaps we need to try to attract more newblood from the Colosseum and Entrance Hall (can newbies post here?).

**therother** · 10-29-2004, 12:17

I certainly hope not. I was hoping to get in on a game or two when I have more time on my hands...

**Tamur** · 10-30-2004, 17:33

I'm interested, I'm interested! *waves hands in air* I'm on holiday till next Monday, but remain very excited to give this a go. RTW has marvelous characterisation opportunities.

**King Yngvar** · 10-31-2004, 03:34

Well, maybe the reason is that instead of playing as a leader and out his reign, the recent PBMs have been played in 10 year turns. Kind of boring if you ask me. I would rather play the reign of a king. There are two PBMs going on in Total Rome...

**Jambo** · 11-03-2004, 14:09

Absolutely agree with the last post by King Yngvar. For flavour and the creation of interesting stories, one really has to play out the reign of a faction leader as opposed to simply a 20 year period.

EDiT: Also, I'm assuming the anticipated arrival of patch 1.2 is keeping people from rushing in and starting long campaigns. Once many of the known issues have been resolved (hopefully) one might start to see a flood of interest again.

**ChaosLord** · 11-13-2004, 21:41

I think theres a way to make it like MTW in the length without making each reign too long. First off we set a mandatory retirement date, I propose 50 or 55. Since i'm guessing average heir age will be mid 20s, this is the equivalent of a 50-60 year reign more or less. Also, by mandatory retirement I mean killing the char off. Which can easily be done by a console command, so the char is out of the story and his heir takes control.

Now in addition to this we could set up a inheritance system. Make it so the first-born son of the ruler is considered the true heir and will always be set as so. If he dies, then its his younger brothers/uncles/cousins/etc... This would help with continuity and not really hurt the game any since leaders don't seem affect faction stuff faction-wide like in MTW.

With both of these in place and the mandatory retirement age I think PBMs would progress along better while still keeping the MTW feel of actually playing out a reign. The only bother would be knowing that you were going to have to end soon, but then you could feel that in MTW and VI too. Anyway, what does everyone think of those restrictions? I'm getting the urge to play a PBM myself, one of the smaller barbarian factions I think.