KotR cataclysmic event discussion thread

[TinCow]

I'm most interested to see how the Houses react to this... Crisis points in history generally lead to the resolution of problems that are completely unrelated to the catastrophe -- the 12th & 13th century plagues, for example, lead to a massive increase in trade due to inheritances and general democratisation of the field.

I have a feeling some of the difficult questions of recent years will be solved rather permanently.

I am very curious as well. It's entirely possible that the crisis could unite the Houses (and Outremer) and have them cooperating on a level never before seen. At the same time, with the extreme pressure on all fronts and insufficient resources to meet all needs, it's also possible that the fractures will become even greater as the Houses squabble to seize whatever resources they can to save themselves.

This is more of a communications logistics question.

I'd like to work out a way to keep separate TC's IC and OOC actions. The things he would have to do OOC to engineer this, are things we would gut a person IC for doing normally.

I am planning a three tiered system to inform you IC what is going on. Anything that I do not list IC can be assumed to be due to OOC actions and should thus be ignored. The system will be as such:

First, major phases or events will be introduced with a story in the Story thread. These will give background and a plot about what is happening and why. I expect somewhere in the region of 3 to 5 of these during my term, depending on the plot that is chosen.

Second, every game turn will use a modified system of the battle-list postings that Chancellors have been making in the OOC thread for some time. This will include the current status of each avatar in the game, a brief description of the challenges they find themselves in, and a short multiple choice description of possible actions. These multiple choice descriptions will not be definitive by any means, they will merely provide examples of options that are open to you. For example:

Johnny von Hindenburg:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You are the Count of Pfarphenplatz. The city is rioting and half of the garrison has been killed or deserted. You have two groups of knights with you and a large Polish army is nearby. There is no way to hire mercenaries or recruit new garrison units.

(A) Garrison Pfarphenplatz with your knights and attempt to restore order and hold the city.
(B) Ride to Pfarphenplatz and rescue the garrison before they are overwhelmed, then attempt to flee to the safety of Somewhatnearbyville. This will slow you down and you may be caught in the field by the Polish army.
(C) Abandon Pfarphenplatz and ride immediately for Somewhatnearbyville.

People may tell me they want to follow one of these paths or give a path of their own. If a person gives me no information for a particular turn, I will always choose the path that I deem to be best for keeping them alive. If an avatar's situation has not changed much from before, I will likely not give any info on them or simply write a "Proceeding as before" type note. Please note that since I cannot find a way to control the enemy AI, I will sometimes artificially create battles for you. Thus, if in the above example you chose (B) but the AI did not attack you and I want it to, I will move the Polish army near you and have you attack it. Even though the battle will be setup as you attacking, it will be roleplayed as a defensive battle and you will still have to fight it.

Also, the results of every action will not be guaranteed. If you chose (B) you could be attacked in the field, but you could also get lucky and escape without a battle. If you chose (A) you could be successful and restore order, perhaps opening up a new possibility to recruit one new garrison regiment. On the otherhand, you could fail to restore order, and rioting could continue, resulting in the destruction of a further garrison regiment and one of your knight regiments. I will be using a combination of factors to determine the results, including your character traits (i.e. avatars with "popular" traits will have a better chance at restoring order than ones with "unpopular" traits), the arrangement of the armies and the Reich, and my own imagination. I am even toying with the idea of actually rolling a die to determine the result (i.e. "unpopular" avatar succeeds in restoring order on a 1 or 2 on a d6. "popular" avatar suceeds in restoring order on a 1 to 4 on a d6). econ21 did something similar to this with the WOTS Civil War battles and it was excellent.

Finally, the last area will be Chancellor's reports. These will be the only real interaction Lothar has with the game. I will summarize any previous events of significance not covered by the previous areas here. This will also be where Lothar's decisions about how to allocate resources will be made. I do not anticipate there being many resources available to allocate for the majority of the event, so the decisions Lothar has to make will likely be minimal and infrequent. I want to concentrate mainly on the story (the first section) and the 'choose your own adventure' style actions for the players (the second section) rather than a traditional Chancellorship.