The Will of the Senate - out of character thread

[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that we will have a Senate dictating the Consuls actions, I think the need to declare your enemies/objectives has been superceded.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.

[econ21]

Good point, TinCow - there are "four turns per year mods" (FTPY):

http://forums.rometotalrealism.org/i...showtopic=8656

Currently, one possibility is the "FTPY mod for Platinum". I'd like to use a Platinum mod so we can use 1.5 RTW as I am getting sick of fighting rebels in 1.2 and also IIRC there are some bugs (save/reload? charge bonus?) etc.

I've tried to recruit on the RTR Platinum sub-forum - feel free to make your own announcements in other forum. In response, LestaT said he would join if we used his Imperator II mod. This includes the FTPY mod and is designed for Romans specifically, so I think it is ideal for us. But it is still a beta and we can't have CTDs messing up our PBM. We should check on the status of the mod when we are about to start.

FTPY is also incorporated in other mods which we should investigate (and maybe try out).

I am quite keen to start this going quite soon - maybe next weekend? But I'd like some more old-time PBMers (and newcomers!) to sign up here first.

[TinCow]

I played an old version of RTR and enjoyed it but I'm largely out of the loop when it comes to RTW modding. As such, I'll go with whatever mods and config edits everyone else agrees with. The complexity of installing mods and such is not an issue for me. I'll do whatever is decided.

I may actually download RTR Platinum this afternoon to see what has changed since last I played.

Edit:

Urrr... I'm only seeing RTR 6 Gold. Where is Platinum?

[econ21]

Urrr... I'm only seeing RTR 6 Gold. Where is Platinum?

The download link is in my post #2 above.

And for future reference (inc. mine!) the 4TPY mod for Platinum is at:

http://forums.rometotalrealism.org/i...0&#entry251110