Should BtSH call it quits?

[The Celtic Viking]

IMO the "faction leader" should represent someone chosen during these meetings to hold the meetings and perhaps also as the chosen commander if we need to band up against a common threat. I don't think it should represent any actual lordship over other tribes (or even necessarily his own).

IMO Council sessions should not be held on any specific regularity so long as we're not united, but can be called by the "faction leader" (and the chiefs of each tribe can request one to him). It should be about things that concern all tribes, like banding together against a common foe, unification attempts or perhaps an attempt to get to some general agreements like "don't exterminate the populations" or whatever.

1: The tribal council; one (thread) for each tribe, where the chief and the thanes of the tribe would meet to discuss politics and so on. This would act like the BtSH (or more likely the WotB) council sessions, where the thanes discuss their ideas with the Chief, and the Chief decides what to do. This would include domestic and military ideas. Of course there is the problem of players from other tribes reading all the different tribal threads and gaining advantages. We cannot hope to stop this from happening, so we would have to be more cunning; perhaps not everything said in the council can be trusted...

Sounds more like TVS.

Anyway, two different sorts of councils seem natural enough, but I don't agree about that last part. What's the point with having a place to discuss things in, if that place can't be trusted for any meaningful discussion? Just take it away and hold the whole thing in a private area then, and lets not bother with the puppet show.

If we're going to have these, it's better to make it clear that whatever is said in there cannot be used by anyone not part of that tribe. They should preferably not read it at all, but if they do, must not take it into account when making their own decisions.

[mini]

we should steal the 'duel engine' that is being constructed in KOTF and modify it.

I think the strongest warriors were the leaders, so 'the king' must be challengeable at all times ;p

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

IMO the "faction leader" should represent someone chosen during these meetings to hold the meetings and perhaps also as the chosen commander if we need to band up against a common threat. I don't think it should represent any actual lordship over other tribes (or even necessarily his own).

IMO Council sessions should not be held on any specific regularity so long as we're not united, but can be called by the "faction leader" (and the chiefs of each tribe can request one to him). It should be about things that concern all tribes, like banding together against a common foe, unification attempts or perhaps an attempt to get to some general agreements like "don't exterminate the populations" or whatever.



Sounds more like TVS.

Anyway, two different sorts of councils seem natural enough, but I don't agree about that last part. What's the point with having a place to discuss things in, if that place can't be trusted for any meaningful discussion? Just take it away and hold the whole thing in a private area then, and lets not bother with the puppet show.

If we're going to have these, it's better to make it clear that whatever is said in there cannot be used by anyone not part of that tribe. They should preferably not read it at all, but if they do, must not take it into account when making their own decisions.

I feel like what goes in the tribes council should be up to each tribe to decide. if they want to set up a separate forum for themselves then more power to them.
(you don't happen to want to be the faction leader again do you TCV? )

[The Celtic Viking]

Well, I do have that Royal aura about me.

As for private forums, sure. I have no objection to that. You shouldn't have to do that to keep the tribal councils from the other tribes' IC eyes, though.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

so what else do we need to figure out? heres soem things we have to discuss

1. Are we going to use a system thats the same as WotB and BtSH for PVP?
2. and do we all agree on a system of ranks that is similar to what Bean suggests?
3. what 4 starting provinces are we going to have for the tribes, and do we want to give each tribe a "bonus"
4. do we want to use TCV's suggestion on Faction leader and councils?
5. what do we want for a economic system?
6. do we want a duel system similar to KoTF's?

[navarro951]

i like the whole idea, but i dont think you guys are taking into account what this means as far as work and players. If your going to have actual tribes it means more players, more console use, more well everything. Im totally up for it but the work involved in making this game would be its downfall i would unfortunately bet money on it im so positive.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

You have a point, that may be the biggest problem we have. It is going to take a lot of console work to get this going, and we REALLY need to find more players if we want it to work.

[Azathoth]

Well, I've "technically" been with BtSH since the very beginning, so you have my sword.

[/Bean\]

IMO the "faction leader" should represent someone chosen during these meetings to hold the meetings and perhaps also as the chosen commander if we need to band up against a common threat. I don't think it should represent any actual lordship over other tribes (or even necessarily his own).

IMO Council sessions should not be held on any specific regularity so long as we're not united, but can be called by the "faction leader" (and the chiefs of each tribe can request one to him). It should be about things that concern all tribes, like banding together against a common foe, unification attempts or perhaps an attempt to get to some general agreements like "don't exterminate the populations" or whatever.

That's kinda exactly what I didn't want the faction leader to be. Why should the chiefs of seperate tribes answer to this one guy? It ruins the point, surely. The leaders of events should always be choson on the spot considering strength and importance rather than them being the in-game faction leader.

I agree council sessions shouldn't be regular, but it does give a place where players can always talk to each other, and gives a regular time when all players should be active. So maybe introduce some regularity just to oil the machine, if you see what I mean. But once again you say all the chiefs need t request the 'faction leader' to hold a meeting. The point was each chief is their own faction leader. I don't think we should use the ingame faction leader at all. If that character also happens to be the best candidate for a chief, then good. But he shouldn't automatically be in a position of power.

And we can always gain a decent player base by recruiting in the EB forums just before we're about to start. IF we can sort out the way the game is going to work, then I think it should supply some new interest, as it should run differently from other PBMs, thus being more interesting. I envisage this game as being kinda like a PBM/hotseat combined, so it should gain interest from both forms of players.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

Here is an Idea, how about have councils of all the tribes be called if Two tribe chief call for it, like each tribe can call its own councils, but to get a council with all the tribes then two Chiefs have to agree to it.

also for things like Economics I believe we may have to have each chief responsible for their own Income and upkeep (similar to WoTB rebels) then we can have one player be responsible for sorting out how much money each tribe gets (and if we have to use the console).


Really I think that the system we are working out will be similar to KoTR, but with no king. And we will have to use the Personal income system of TVS. This new game will just be smashing all these features together (Each tribe will have its own income and upkeep) If we just pick and choose from those two we have the basic rule structure. Although we will have to work out how we choose each person tribe. (do we follow the family tree or allow everyone to choose the tribe they prefer)

• So do we want to have some kind of elected position to deal with all economic issues? Or should we have each tribe elect their own?
• Do we want some kind of dueling system? (That is going to be a B!t<h to write, with EB’s trait system.
• We need to actually make the rankings. How much power should each chief have. How influential should Thanes be?
• How are we going to handle the creation of new tribes? How will we allow rebellions?
• Do we allow each chief to handle their own console work or have the GM do it?

sorry if I sound stupid, but I think these are a few questions we need to get out of the way.

[navarro951]

Here is an Idea, how about have councils of all the tribes be called if Two tribe chief call for it, like each tribe can call its own councils, but to get a council with all the tribes then two Chiefs have to agree to it.

also for things like Economics I believe we may have to have each chief responsible for their own Income and upkeep (similar to WoTB rebels) then we can have one player be responsible for sorting out how much money each tribe gets (and if we have to use the console).


Really I think that the system we are working out will be similar to KoTR, but with no king. And we will have to use the Personal income system of TVS. This new game will just be smashing all these features together (Each tribe will have its own income and upkeep) If we just pick and choose from those two we have the basic rule structure. Although we will have to work out how we choose each person tribe. (do we follow the family tree or allow everyone to choose the tribe they prefer)

• So do we want to have some kind of elected position to deal with all economic issues? Or should we have each tribe elect their own?
• Do we want some kind of dueling system? (That is going to be a B!t<h to write, with EB’s trait system.
• We need to actually make the rankings. How much power should each chief have. How influential should Thanes be?
• How are we going to handle the creation of new tribes? How will we allow rebellions?
• Do we allow each chief to handle their own console work or have the GM do it?

sorry if I sound stupid, but I think these are a few questions we need to get out of the way.

see this actually would be a good system. good show. again tho if were gonna put this through i will need you guys help in recruiting a larger player base.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

I think Bean had a good point when he said that this is pretty new. it is a completely different Idea to most of the other games out, and I think we should not have a huge problem recruiting from the EB forums. (perhaps Choosing Rome, the MOST hated Faction in the game, led to a problem finding Players... :p )


(I am going to try and figure out the basics for a dueling system, in case we do want to use it. Dont expect much, I dont have the time to really go through all the traits and assign bonus's....)

[Azathoth]

I wouldn't be able to do console work on my own.

And what if two chiefs decide to form an alliance, or if three chiefs gang up on the remaining tribe?

Would it be decided through PMs?

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

That is all up to each player and Inter tribe politics are not actually Binding, so yeah go ahead and go through PM.


It is perfectly acceptable to gang up on other tribes, but Trying to keep this alliance together is going to difficult. Most tribes are going to want to have things divided, as it means each chief will get to keep their huge amount of influence. But I can see two tribes ganging up to take on a larger tribe

[The Celtic Viking]

That's kinda exactly what I didn't want the faction leader to be. Why should the chiefs of seperate tribes answer to this one guy?

... because they chose him to have the honour of mediating the major councils?

It ruins the point, surely. The leaders of events should always be choson on the spot considering strength and importance rather than them being the in-game faction leader.

Then you elect the 'faction leader' according to strength and importance. I don't see how that 'ruins the point' (what 'point', exactly?).

I agree council sessions shouldn't be regular, but it does give a place where players can always talk to each other, and gives a regular time when all players should be active. So maybe introduce some regularity just to oil the machine, if you see what I mean.

That's where the tribal councils come in, isn't it? If it helps you understand my point, you can see the tribal councils as "regular sessions", and "inter-tribal councils" as "emergency sessions".

But once again you say all the chiefs need t request the 'faction leader' to hold a meeting. The point was each chief is their own faction leader. I don't think we should use the ingame faction leader at all. If that character also happens to be the best candidate for a chief, then good. But he shouldn't automatically be in a position of power.

I'm not using the faction leader to be a "faction leader" of any kind; if you think I do then you don't understand what I've been saying at all. He's not any leader that the chiefs are subordinate to, he's just a guy all tribes trust enough to hold the inter-tribal councils fairly. He has that power thanks to general elections, so it's not exactly 'automatically'.

[/Bean\]

Okey dokey, thanks for clearing that up. However, I don't like the idea of these large meetings concerning all the tribes during an emergency session. What I meant by all the tribes meeting was at a market gathering/trading sesh, which I'm pretty sure they had. To me, it sounds like these emergency sessions would be a very unlikely thing to happen of it involved all the tribes. I think it could happen during the game, should a faction (such as the Romans) invade Germania, publicly announcing they are planning to wipe out all German tribes, then maybe then we band together, But it shouldn't be a planned thing. Stop me if I'm barking up the wrong tree. We can always wait for the rules to be drawn up and revisit the issue.

I wouldn't worry about a player base yet, Navarro. Plenty of time to sort that out, and I'm pretty sure we can get a decent one up.

Azathoth, I believe the long post I made on 07-05-2009 19:59 answers most of your queries.

I think if we get a good, solid system of doing things, then we can set up an easy and simple way of each tribe getting their seperate income and console work. The console work won't be too much if we split it up between ourselves. This of course means that one person (aka: Navarro) won't be able to keep everything under wraps himself, thus not being the omniscient GM. However, I think this will allow the game to move quicker, smoother and heep less pressure on one person. Not that I doubt you could handle it, Navarro, but whenever you were gone for more than one night in BtSH, the whole system stopped. I think we have a core of solid, loyal players now, in Navarro, TCV, Everyone, myself and CDF, and some commendable players like Swiss and Mini. If we all work together, then we can create an efficient and fast flowing game, creating more interest and player numbers. That will also be quite different from the other PBM's, adding to the originality of our game.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

Once again Bean shows his brilliance, if we split up the work (perhaps each of us could start off as the chiefs? it would make things go much faster while we get into the feel of things) we can make this work.

all we have to do is get all the rules together a task I dread.

[The Celtic Viking]

Okey dokey, thanks for clearing that up. However, I don't like the idea of these large meetings concerning all the tribes during an emergency session. What I meant by all the tribes meeting was at a market gathering/trading sesh, which I'm pretty sure they had. To me, it sounds like these emergency sessions would be a very unlikely thing to happen of it involved all the tribes.

Gah, you're misunderstanding me again! I must learn how to communicate my thoughts better.

All I meant when I said they would be like emergency sessions would be that they're 'secondary' sessions that are called when needed but not on a regular basis. Like emergency sessions in BtSH and WotB, in that sense. Anything beyond that would be taking the... whatstheword... simile? too far.

My idea of inter-tribal councils would not preclude such a market (indeed, what I think you intend should happen at that market is not covered by my suggestion of the councils at all). I very much agree with that idea.

I think it could happen during the game, should a faction (such as the Romans) invade Germania, publicly announcing they are planning to wipe out all German tribes, then maybe then we band together, But it shouldn't be a planned thing. Stop me if I'm barking up the wrong tree. We can always wait for the rules to be drawn up and revisit the issue.

You're definitely barking up the wrong tree - I'm not saying anything should be planned. (If you don't remember, I was fiercely against going against the Carthies just because that's what happened in history. I don't want anything planned like that.) If you re-read what I said here, you'll see that I said "uniting against a common foe", meaning an enemy they shared. That's not unrealistic, is it?

Even in the scenario you paint up, a case could be made that the Romans wouldn't be satisfied with just one tribe's possessions, but would continue with the others once the first tribe is down. Together they'd have a better chance than each tribe for itself, one at a time. I'm not saying it they should be forced to do it, but the choice should be there. It was one of the examples I used for what could be done in the inter-tribal councils.

I wouldn't worry about a player base yet, Navarro. Plenty of time to sort that out, and I'm pretty sure we can get a decent one up.

I think if we get a good, solid system of doing things, then we can set up an easy and simple way of each tribe getting their seperate income and console work. The console work won't be too much if we split it up between ourselves. This of course means that one person (aka: Navarro) won't be able to keep everything under wraps himself, thus not being the omniscient GM. However, I think this will allow the game to move quicker, smoother and heep less pressure on one person. Not that I doubt you could handle it, Navarro, but whenever you were gone for more than one night in BtSH, the whole system stopped. I think we have a core of solid, loyal players now, in Navarro, TCV, Everyone, myself and CDF, and some commendable players like Swiss and Mini. If we all work together, then we can create an efficient and fast flowing game, creating more interest and player numbers. That will also be quite different from the other PBM's, adding to the originality of our game.

I certainly hope you're correct here, and I'm actually semi-positive. I think it will be easier to have more players come and stay for a new game too, since it's easier to be in from the beginning than to jump in somewhere in the middle of the action, when there's so much to learn about the relations between the pre-existing players, general history and what-not.

[johnhughthom]

I take it the Germanic tribes of this period wouldn't have had a monetary system and most tribes would have become wealthy through raiding/conquering other tribes. How about a system where a tribe can only build something in their territories depending on how many battles they have fought. For example, a small battle against less than 200 rebel troops will let you build something that costs up to 800, whereas defeating a full Roman stack will let you build something costing much more. Or you could use the battlepoints (or however you wanted to describe them) to build more troops, bigger armies would require constant battles to keep the army together. This would encourage players striking deep into enemy territory, I think the Sweboz have raiding traits which makes this less of a problem than with other factions.

This would probably need the whole monetary system to be controlled by a game-master and a lot of console use to control the more abstract system in-game. I could draw up a proper set of rules if anybody thinks it could work.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

ugghhhhh, I don't know, I think a rule system like that would be a nightmare. It would be murder for the GM. I just don't think that putting that much pressure on the GM is the best Idea, we all have real lives, and if something happened everything would fall all out of wack.

as it is we wont have to do much console use, and we can have each tribe responsible for their own economics. Plus I believe that even as it is we will see tribes having to rely heavily on rading if they want to be able to maintain any kind of army, (I can tell you from experience, keeping even a stack of levy troops around with only 3 cities out of a faction is murder, and don't even get me started on buildings...) they are going to HAVE to raid if they want to get enough money for any kind of building.

[/Bean\]

@TVS: I wouldn't worry, I've misunderstood you. Thanks for clearing that all up. If i understood correctly....we agree. Yes?

@johnhughthom: The Germans may not have had a system of money like the Mediterrainian civilisations did (which is why I was toying with the idea of land and assets rather than money wealth for the Thanes) but unfortuantely the EB engine does not see the difference, and it costs gold to build and recruit no matter what civilisation you are. So we really have no choice but to use money.

Now, I hear you say, why not do as you suggest and build due to victory points, and add a certain amount of money per victory point? Well, that would be more historical, but its also an unnecessary middle man, that would do nothing but annoy the GM as he has to monitor it all, and should he be absent or miss any it would create problems. So it may not be historical, but we have to get the balance between historical accuracy and easy gameplay. Because ultimately it is the ease of the game that keeps it fun to play.

@CDF: I agree, we should choose the initial tribe chiefs from our core player base, and either assign, let the chiefs or the players choose whatever tribe they want to join. There should, however, be a certain amount of slots per tribe, so that there isn't a risk of a huge inbalance of players:tribes.

Raids

Now, I like the idea of raids, but these should not be the primary or the only way of obtaining wealth. It should cost something to conduct a raid, either money or some other resource that we use. Otherwise, come spring/summer of each year every tribe is going to be conducting large raids on the others with little or no consequences, and nothing gets achieved.

Obviously we can gain bonus' from successful raids, or lose something from unsuccessful raids. That would initiate the sense of risk when conducting these activities. We can also use them to give our younger players (tribal warriors/thanes) experience in the field, which should be valuable in some ways.


Now then...

* So do we want to have some kind of elected position to deal with all economic issues? Or should we have each tribe elect their own?

It is going to be difficult, and we need to decide as a group whether we are going to basically be like the American governmental system, where each state (roughly, I know its more complex than this, but hey) controls themselves (in other words, let each tribe, led by the chief, control their own incomes and so on), or a more autocratic style, where the GM controls everything, making it a bit fairer and evenly run, but ultimately slower, more stressful and in my opinion less fun?

We could go for a counterbalance, where each tribe runs themselves, using a certain amount of resources and console work that is controlled by the GM, and each tribe reports back (OOC) to the GM, who can then decide whether each tribe is being fair and so on. This might need more work later.

* Do we want some kind of dueling system? (That is going to be a B!t<h to write, with EB’s trait system.

I haven't really read into KotF and it's system of running things yet, so I can't comment. Maybe that can be your job to decide, CDF. Is it good? Does it work? Can we use it? Is it worth the work?

* We need to actually make the rankings. How much power should each chief have. How influential should Thanes be?

Well, I think this needs revisiting once we decide (or know) how many players are going to be in each tribe, but the way I see it we are not going to be needing many ranks, and they won't be ranks in the same way as in BtSH, WotB and the like. They were more offices, if you see what I mean.

In this, I see ranks as being exactly that: how high does the chief (and the rest of the tribe) rank you as a member of the tribe. Your power, prestige and popularity rests solely in your relationship and respect of and with the rest of the tribe and the chief.

Therefore, there will be no need for more than two main ranks (with some subdivisions, I'll get there).

1: Chief

2: Thane

The chiefs family (namely his sons, as these will be the playable characters) will probably be of high importance, or a subdivision of the chief. However, I do not have the necessary knowledge to decide whether the tribes of the time respected a chiefs son would naturally take over from him, or the next strongest warrior would take the 'throne', for want of a better word. If someone could find that out for me, with evidence or assurence from, maybe, an EB team member, I would be very grateful, and we could decide whether to class son's as thanes or royal family.

The Thanes would obviusly be the noblemen of the tribe, and thus would lead by example, bravery, and hold riches such as gold or resources. These would be the majority of the players' positions. Each holds the title of Thane, but their rank is decreed by several things:

- Wealth/assets/land titles, that sort of thing, giving them material importance
- Bravery/skill in battle, giving them the respect of the warriors
- High intellect/power/trust from the tribe
- Favourtism by the Chief or other important Thanes.

Therefore there is no high or low rank to be written down. Players must make their own ranks based on the respect of other tribe members and the Chief, and could lose it through inactivity or a false move. This should boost activity, as players who just pop on from time to time and do not put much into the game should not expect to get as much out of it as others who work their way up themselves. Thanes' influence should coincide with their gameplay effort and stance within the tribe.

Now, I do not know how much power chiefs had; whether it was completely autocratical or if (like in Makedonia) they were kept in line by the Thanes. I think a balance between the two would be the best for gameplay, but I would like to know for historical accuracy as well. Being the Chief should be the ultimate aim of the players, but they shouldn't be spending the entire game fighting with the other members of their own tribe trying to kill of everybody until they are chief. That's pointless. The Chief should make decisions, be respected and be in charge of the tribal movements etc., but he should know that, if he makes several extremely unpopular or bad moves, he may be removed. However, this should not be easy, and we may have to set up a system of bodyguards and stuff to make sure we don't have too many deaths.

Phew, that was a long one.

* How are we going to handle the creation of new tribes? How will we allow rebellions?

Hmm, a difficult one, and one we need to discuss. However, I think we should leave this for the time being, make sure we are happy with our inital tribal set ups, make their foundations solid, before thinking about how to make new ones. Fair? Otherwise we start down too many paths and never reach the end of any. The same goes with rebellions for now. We will deal with them, though.


And finally, for now:

* Do we allow each chief to handle their own console work or have the GM do it?

Ah, I've mainly already given my point on this one. Yay.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

Raids

Now, I like the idea of raids, but these should not be the primary or the only way of obtaining wealth. It should cost something to conduct a raid, either money or some other resource that we use. Otherwise, come spring/summer of each year every tribe is going to be conducting large raids on the others with little or no consequences, and nothing gets achieved.

Obviously we can gain bonus' from successful raids, or lose something from unsuccessful raids. That would initiate the sense of risk when conducting these activities. We can also use them to give our younger players (tribal warriors/thanes) experience in the field, which should be valuable in some ways.

I believe that raiding will be more against AI tribes, such as a group of thanes crossing the Rhine and rampaging there, or perhaps going south to Italy. Things like that
The price will be simple, they are going to lose men, and because of that it is likely that the army will have to be retrained, which will decrease the amount of loot they get from their plunder. and of course, if they fail on a raid, then they will most likely end up dead

The only problem from that I can see is that it may stunt the growth of the factions around us, but I believe we can remedy this by having raiding restricted to a certain "season" (perhaps events) or perhaps after a city has been raided and looted it can not be looted again for 10 years, which will lead thanes to go on longer and much more dangerous raids deeper into enemy territory!

I believe that raiding will be a great way to get people to jump in to the game, you will have thanes being handed some men and told to go get some wealth for the good of their tribe, with the ever present danger that if they fail, they probably wont be going anywhere in the Tribal Hierarchy.

I haven't really read into KotF and it's system of running things yet, so I can't comment. Maybe that can be your job to decide, CDF. Is it good? Does it work? Can we use it? Is it worth the work?

ohh its excellent, and would definitely add some fun to the game, along with also being somewhat historical (I am quite sure fights were used to solve things )
but It is going to take a lot of effort to get a workable system of it. I can try and get a system together for EB, but it will be somewhat basic (not to many bonus's other than a few basic traits)


But I think that the Rarity of most EB traits will mean that dueling will boil down to the basic trait system (the Vigorous person will win most of the time) I will show you what I have later, I think it will work out well enough.




perhaps we should allow each Chief to create their own system of rankings for their tribe? it would make the game more interesting if each tribe seemed to be their own separate faction, with the Chiefs deciding if they want to have elected positions, if they want to choose all of these things them self just an idea.


I agree that killing a chief should be difficult, unless they have turned the entire tribe against them.



also Bean, what provinces should we start out with, and do we want the "bonus's" you were talking about earlier? also if we are going do 1.2 how are we going to handle RBG's?

[Azathoth]

Another question then: If we decide that there won't be a GM, will the tribal chiefs be the only
ones who have to use the console, or will all characters need to do it? Because I literally can't use the console - it just doesn't work on this computer, for any game.

I've always preferred being more of a low-importance character, like in BtSH, so that's all that really matters at this point.

[Azathoth]

And about 1.2 - we'll all need to get that light spear/spear fix, or whatever it's called, if we use it.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

If you are not a chief then you will most definitely not need to use the console. even if you are the chief you can always shove the responsibility over to someone else (such is your right! )

[/Bean\]

@Azathoth: Console use should definately be restricted, otherwise we lose control on the game. If everyone is going on adding stuff via console whenever they feel like it we'll end up with super tribes.

There will, however, always be a GM, currently Navarro (who will undoubtedly stay GM unless he's called away on tour or something). What we were discussing was how the GM was going to implement himself into the game, whether like in BtSH where Navarro ran everything, or whether it is split between all of the game officials.

@CDF: Sure, players can raid outside of the other tribes, but I still think we should have raiding inside as well. That will create a nice balance. I agree there may have to be a time period between raidings. And perhaps Navarro as GM could script some surprise forces around cities to protect them every now and again to spice things up a bit, or pay some ambushes along the way the raid is travelling.

The idea of allowing each chief to choose how they run their tribe themselves is interesting, and I wonder if it would work. How much freedom would they be allowed, because its all gotta fit in together within the game rules. Although we could have a rule section on the limitations or inexpendable points of what the tribal system must include, and chiefs can work around that, creating their own system.

I am afraid that messing around with 1.2 and RBG's is not my forte; I don't know what's going on there, so I can't help. There must be some information on it though, somewhere on the forums.

I'm gonna hop onto EB in a mo, and give people a choice on territories, factions and the like. We need to see if we can find someone with good knowledge of the system to help us move some of the eastern factions and make them German. I think that would help on the economic and diplomatic side of things in-game. If we can get one version of EB working like this, we can just copy the files that are changed and give them to everyone who wants to join the game.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

The idea of allowing each chief to choose how they run their tribe themselves is interesting, and I wonder if it would work. How much freedom would they be allowed, because its all gotta fit in together within the game rules. Although we could have a rule section on the limitations or inexpendable points of what the tribal system must include, and chiefs can work around that, creating their own system.

I'm gonna hop onto EB in a mo, and give people a choice on territories, factions and the like. We need to see if we can find someone with good knowledge of the system to help us move some of the eastern factions and make them German. I think that would help on the economic and diplomatic side of things in-game. If we can get one version of EB working like this, we can just copy the files that are changed and give them to everyone who wants to join the game.

I think we could definitely do something like that, have a basic framework for how tribal structure works, and then let each of the tribes build there own kind of code around that. I think that they should be given some freedom, but not enough that it become a bother to the GM and the other tribesmen.
I think they should be allowed to create their own personal rankings and positions of power within their tribe stuff like that.


Also I don't think we should change to to much in the game, it will get to be too much of a headache...... I am not a modder at all, so we may have to find someone over in the EB forum to help us if we want to change anything.

[/Bean\]

I know, thats what I was suggesting. If we get all that hard stuff out of the way now, it will make the game run smoother. Otherwise we have to deal with splitting up our income fairly, and giving everyone their own budgets, and we all ally and go to war with the same faction, meaning we can't roleplay asking a major power to interfere in our own politics. It will make the game so much better if we are seperate.

Right, possible starting provinces could be:-

* Swebolandam (Swebotraustastamnoz [Town])
* Habokulandam (Gawjam-Habukoz [Town])
* Heruskolandam (Gawjam-Heruskoz [Town])
* Mrog Arctagone (Arctaunon [Town])
* Vindelicos (Videlicoppidos [Large Town])
* Mrogbonna (Eburonum [Large Town])
* Silengolandam (Gawjam-Silengoz [Town])
* Lugouw (Carrodunum [Town])
* Venedu Tauta (Ascaucalis [Town])
* Sembu Gentys (Gintaras-Ostan [Town])
* Rugolandam (Gawjam-Rugoz [Town])
* Kimbrolandam (Gawjam-Kimbroz [Town])
* Skandza (Gawjam-Skandzawarjoz [Town])
* Auwjogotanoz [Town])


And the factions that we can change could be:-

* Bactria
* Pahlava
* Saka Rauka
* Saba

I chose these because we are not at all likely to come into contact with them, and so they will not be missed.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

seems like it is going to be a B!t<h to create a mod for all of this......

I don't have much experience switching between factions during a game, so I am just going to keep quite.


although I like the Idea.
as for provinces do we want each tribe to start off with one?
if so perhaps,

Venedu Tauta

Mrog Arctagone

Skandza

Silengolandam

they are all regular towns, and most are far enough away form the others so that we don't have infighting until everyone has some territory under their belt.

[Azathoth]

* Lugouw
* Vindelicos
* Mrogbonna

Aren't those Celtic?

And Sembu Gentys is Baltic/Ugro-Finnic, isn't it?

What province is Aujogotanoz in, I don't think I've heard of it. Is that the island?

My personal opinion is that we have the Sweboz (Swebolandam) and their three major enemies, Habukozez (Habukolandam), heriskozez (Heruskolandam), and Hathinez (Mrog Arctagone), the other provinces being minor tribes. The only problem is the lack of choices, and the one-province starting thing. But, if you think about it, raiding bands were often only a few hundred skirmishers, and the bigger ones were battles for conquest, migration, dire emergencies, etc. So only being able to support a quarter stack of levies would be realistic.

For example - Skandza has many different scattered tribes that are pretty fractious on their own.
Bastarnozez are too far away, Silengozez are very small, the island is small and..well, an island. The Rugozez were big traders, Venedu Tauta and Kimbrolandam I'm not sure about.