The Will of the Senate - out of character thread

[TinCow]

I like all of that, though I would like to give some sort of power to the Senate to end a Consul's reign if he is particularly irksome to the rest. Perhaps something like 3/4 vote to 'impeach'. This would allow some force behind Senate votes to do this or that during a campaign. Ignore the body too often and you'll be done... unless of course you assume full dictatorship by refusing to upload a save game. :P

As for the running commentaries from both Consul and Senate, that would be great... but it would require the Consul to play relatively slowly. If someone zipped through and did their reign in two play sessions (like I tend to do) there would be no room for any dialog and developments. We could respond to this by asking people to play no more than 5 turns every day or something, but how long do we want this to go for? Can we keep people interested and active for that long?

While I find these ideas incredibly interesting from a role-playing perspective, I'm very concerned that this will require too much dedication to work properly. There's no point in doing a Senate like this unless we have at least a half dozen people who are willing to regularly post and role-play. Given the lackluster responses most PBMs get, I'm not sure if this is possible. Maybe we should be advertising in some of the more frequented forums.

[Avicenna]

I'd participate in the voting, but I have no time or the writing skills to do the PBM. Just have a vote once a decade, as econ suggested.

Also, wouldn't it be a bit difficult for a non-player to role-play their character? The traits change so often it's hard to keep up.

[econ21]

OK, I agree a running commentary from the Senate is not very feasible. Let's assume their involvement will largely come during the Senate sessions - their traits will also only be updated then. (I'm thinking of making trading ancillaries against the rules, except by the mutual consent. I was even wondering about weighting votes by influence). I agree personally I tend like to blitz through my reign in a week (or weekend) rather than pace myself.

It's true that to make this interesting we will need around six active people. But we've got at least 3 already - me, TinCow and Tiberius. IIRC, we only start with 4 Roman faction members in RTR anyway. Perhaps we can have some "ghost" Senate members - ie who have not been assigned avatars yet. I think some weeding out of sleeping Senate members will be required - let's say miss two votes and your avatar is reassigned (if there are some active ghosts without avatars). The limit on participants will steadily grow up to 40+, but we might be able to fill that by involving some Org stalwarts (e.g. staff) who like Tiberius may not actually want to play out a reign[1]. We could advertise more widely - even in the RTR website - but right now I'd like to get a hardcore of PBM veterans interested to see if we have critical mass.

An impeachment rule is ok, but I was thinking of a more cooperative model for participant interactions. Maybe that kind of thing might come in to play if we manage to attract a large number of active participants. If it is just a handful of us, we may not want to go at each other's throats.

I am wondering if I should start a new thread - with a different title ("The Senate needs YOU" or something) - to see if we can involve more PMers. Are we happy enough to go public?

[1]EDIT: Although, I am thinking that this PBM may involve much less writing than previous ones - incumbents only need produce a manifesto and a report. So the burden of writing need not put you off playing a reign, Tiberius.

[Dutch_guy]

I am wondering if I should start a new thread - with a different title ("The Senate needs YOU" or something) - to see if we can involve more PBMers. Are we happy enough to go public?

Well I'm sure there are a lot of people who'd love to play, and like the idea, so I don't see what's wrong with a little advertisement.

I bet loads of members don't even know the throne room exists.

As for the whole senate Idea, I like it. I'd be happy to participate even though time at the moment is scarce...

Meaning...

It will only work if there are enough participants to make it lively, but the fact that participants don't actually have to do anything may mean we can attract PBMers who may not have the time to play a reign at the moment.

...would be good for me.

[Mount Suribachi]

I think this PBEM has excellent potential! Count me in, though only as a back bencher until I get my WRE write-up done! Definately publicise it, and I believe their is a PBEM community on the .com, it may be worth asking them along.

If I may offer several points

Rules 6,7,8 as suggested by Simon now seem a little bit superfluous, not to say confusing. Now that we will have a Senate dictating the Consuls actions, I think the need to declare your enemies/objectives has been superceded. However, a candidate for the Consulship may declare his intentions to make war upon a particular faction as part of his election campaign.

I nominate Simon as the Speaker - he effectively operates that role in the Throne Room anyway

I also think that as a way to keep the campaign ticking along, and to increase realism, all battles should be auto-resolved unless the player (Consul)himself is the general on the battlefield. By doing this we may lose a few more battles than we would normally, but it could also precipitate crises that would require Senate intervention and the dispatch of a PBEMer led army to deal with it. This also raises the possibility of having a PBEMer who isn't currently Consul being sent a save game by the Consul in order to fight just one battle, before returning the save. Thus players who may not have the time to do a full reign can still actively participate in the full game. MSN might be useful for co-ordinating activity like this, maybe even Senate sessions?

Finally, an addition to the army make-up rules. No family members under 30 to be Generals or Governors. Under the Cursus Honorum this very rarely happened. Instead, send 19 year olds out to serve as Legates in an army in the field led by a family member.

[econ21]

OK, I've posted a call for players at the RTR Platinum forum:

http://forums.rometotalrealism.org/i...howtopic=20179

Hopefully we'll get some interest. I'll make similar calls in the Org in due course.


[EDIT]: Some very interesting ideas, there, Mount

I think rules 6+ have been overtaken by events, so I've edited the relevant post to make that clear.

Autoresolving is a biggie. I've never done it but I'm interested in what other people think. The idea of involving non-incumbents in fighting particular battles sounds fun, but may slow things down. I'm thinking of dividing the Senate into two houses - lower (like your frontbench), where members want to play out turns and upper (like your backbench) where there is no such implied commitment[1]. We probably should prioritise avatars for members of the lower House and so expecting them to fight out ad hoc battles would not be unreasonable. If they forfeit - e.g. don't respond to the call to battle within two days and so the battle is autoresolved - the Senate may look unfavorably on a future candidature for the First Consul.

On the age thing, I have similar restrictions in my own games. I like the "true Roman" guidelines on the RTR tips and strategies sub-forum - teenage youngsters first stay at an academy, then sometime in their 20s become military tribunes (2nd general in a stack) etc. But I am not inflexible, as I can't help thinking of outstanding generals and Kings - not Roman, I admit - who were ridiculously young. So if we have an ambitious young thing with lots of command stars and we were in a desperate situation, I might let him have a command. I'd be tempted to make it a guideline, rather than a hard and fast rule (maybe the Senate might have to authorise violations of the rule? perhaps ex post).

Not sure about MSN - I don't use it and would rather try to use this forum - and PMs - to try to build up a collegiate spirit here.

On reflection, I like your proposals but let's get other views.

[1]Participants would be able to switch between upper and lower Houses of the Senate at any time.

[Mount Suribachi]

When you talk about sorting out Avatars do you mean we will actually have our avatars on the Org changed to reflect the avatar of our in-game character? Cool I also suggest that to help each other out we also alter our custom member titles to the name of our in-game character.

I think you are correct to not be totally rigid regarding the Cursus Honorum. IIRC Pompey Magnus was only 19 when he got his first command and Scipio Africanus was also quite young (under 30) when he was given command to fight against Carthage, but like you said, exceptional individuals in exceptional circumstances (civil war and imminent annihilation). And I'm sure we can create ourselves a Boni faction, spouting off about the Mos Maorium and such

*trots off to read "True Roman" guidelines *

[econ21]

By "avatar", I was just using the term in the role-playing sense to refer to the faction member in the game that represents the participant. (I still feel I need a shower after being Shodan's avatar in System Shock 2... ) It would be nice if all or most Senate members had an in-game representation. But adopting appropriate Org graphical avatars and custom names sounds neat.

The "true Roman" guidelines are at:

http://forums.rometotalrealism.org/i...howtopic=12035

They give lots of good ideas and information.

[TinCow]

This is sounding very promising. Autocalc for all battles not supervised by the playing Consul himself makes a lot of sense and would vastly increase the interaction. This would definitely be a much slower progressing game, but I think it could be very interesting. It would also be relatively undemanding for most people, just checking the forums regularly (which I do anyway) and responding.

We don't even have to 'win' in any real sense. Just playing it like this would be the interesting point. Politics, battles, back-stabbing maybe... that would be the goal in and of itself. Are there any mods out there that increase the number of turns per game year? The slower this went, the longer people would get to play their specific avatars.

edit:
After reading those guidelines, not only do I think a lot of them are perfect for us, but I think that the RTR forums may be the perfect place to recruit. Anyone who likes that kind of play style may also like our interactive version of it.