Mick64,Nov 2 2017 wrote:Though I wouldn't cut them off entirely, I would remove the ability to rank up in them , and
I don't think we should remove the ability to rank up in Factions. As I said before, change the way people rank up by making rank ups be part of the Proxy group stuff:
me wrote:Applications for rank advancement can still go through DMs, but it can be based on activity within the Proxy groups and advocating/supporting Faction philosophy within the Proxy groups.
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Mick64,Nov 2 2017 wrote:and the assumption that events will focus around them
Yes, events should be focusing on players.
Mick64,Nov 2 2017 wrote:simply have factions be general philosophies that players can ascribe to if they feel like it would fit their character.
Really, that was their intended role in PnP campaigns. Faction stuff was more minor benefits and background stuff, in PnP, to me.
Hi guys, don't mean to drop in out of nowhere after having been gone for a while, but I've been looking over the forums on my time off and since this place has practically been my second home for several years before life got busy, I guess I feel the need to throw in my two pence.
I know more suggestions of what to make the faction groups probably won't help, but I saw this listing once before and I thought it worked pretty well. Rule of three and all that.
Triad of Order: Harmonium, Fraternity of Order, Mercykillers. Triad of Despair: Bleak Cabal, Doomguard, Dustmen. Triad of the Spirit: Society of Sensation, Transcendant Order, Xaositects. Triad of the Self: Believers of the Source, Fated, Sign of One. Triad of Independence: Athar, Free League, Revolutionary League.
Obviously I'm not expecting anyone else to jump on board immediately with this grouping, or have loads of questions about it, but it worked in my head.
I do feel making the Factions into 'Proxies' might be a good idea, and honestly, you might even need to water down the philosophies a bit. Planescape philosophy after all is a collection of extremified amalgamations of real life philosophy, most of which the majority of us couldn't get our heads around normally... Let alone the full on Planescape variants. And this is coming from someone who prefers unwatered Planescape.
The problem is player count, at the end of the day, and frankly with NWN2 being a dying breed and other servers offering easier 'outs' (more players, easier to get in RP, DIFFERENT content (not necessarily better) etc. etc.) I can't think of a perfect solution, and I've seen my fair share of servers come and go for a variety of good/bad reasons.
Maybe I'll mull over what I've read recently, try and offer something back to the community if I can. I think the bottom line is everyone still here on the forums posting their part, they care. We all do. We have done for years now and we keep posting the same do-do on a different day :P
Hope to see you guys in game at some point in the near-maybe-far-probably future.
And of course, just too add this, these changes can be weaned in slowly, not just hammered in, bam! They are here, i think a mixture of DM Event and in game meetings in conjunction of the forums to more or less see the inception of these proxies being forum is the best way of going about this...
edmaster44 and I were talking on Discord about this, specifically what the groups would do. I had a thought about the "Athar, Believers of the Source, Sign of One" proxy (still suggesting the name "Transfigurers" for that one ;) ).
To me, that proxy sounds like those 3 would be interested in divinity and the divine, but each from different angles.
Example event intro: "Factol Ambar Vergrove calls on the Believers of the Source and their allies, the Athar and Sign of One, to help retreive a divine artifact!" *Godsmen Namer exits stage left.* Think about the interests those groups have in such a thing. Athar would want to prove its merely powerful magic and belief is what powers it. Godsmen want to understand the crafting of it, maybe? Signers want to understand it, so they can imagine such artifacts.
I guess what I'm saying is, if we think of possible (simple) event ideas, stuff that can lead to quests (and, maybe later on, even opposing quests as this evolves)... then maybe we can come up with a basic idea of what each of these groups might do. The goal is for things to ever be evolving and players initiative to be there, of course. But you gotta have stuff to get the ball rolling.
Edit: Also, as a sidenote, I don't know that you need everyone in the respective Proxy groups to play nice with each other in their group OR with the other Proxy groups. One advantage of this system is that it allows for more player oriented politics for those who desire it.
The way I see it is we want to not only make the Factions more user friendly, we also want to make the Factions more appealing. Simply creating umbrella groups might make it user friendlyÂ… but not more appealing. If you group three factions together but not change what they can/should do, you do nothing to make people want to join up and RP them.
LetÂ’s say you have a Faction that no one really plays due to one reason or another. ItÂ’s usually because either the Faction isnÂ’t easily understood or that they have no real place in the mod with which to exercise any real influence. Pairing them up with two other Factions is not going change that unless you share (even in some small way) the influence of the other Factions in the group.
We have the Triad of Law as one of the easiest trio’s to group. If you bring them under an ‘official’ alliance/marriage but change nothing of how they currently work, you literally change nothing at all and give no real reason for people to play the new alliance any differently than now (which is often times, strained). So you share some small facets of each member Faction with the other two. Nothing much and nothing that is going to strip any of their identity. In the Triad you’d share things like give each member Faction limited permission to decide guilt and penalty for street level criminals so any member can decide guilt and issue fines on the spot (depending on rank of member, of course). This would be limited to the lowest level crimes.
Give each member an official place within each investigative team for more serious crimes. Although the Harmonium would still make the official arrest, the other two would officially be a part of the team that investigates the crime (lead by a Harmonium officer) if such was warranted.
Have a visual presence of each faction in each of the faction HQÂ’s. Basically a liaison office for Players to work out of if they chose to.
None of these things take away the core influence and responsibilities of the factions but allows the ground level members to work closely together as a team. ThatÂ’s how I see Faction cooperation working under Proxies. How it would affect the other FactionsÂ… thatÂ’ll take more ideas than just mine. :)
Then itÂ’s no longer Planescape. ItÂ’s simply Forgotten Realms in the Planes. ItÂ’s the Factions that makes Planescape what it is. They need to exist and they need to shine. All we have to do is make it simpler and more fun for people to do that.
Darkrob,Nov 2 2017 wrote: Then itÂ’s no longer Planescape. ItÂ’s simply Forgotten Realms in the Planes. ItÂ’s the Factions that makes Planescape what it is. They need to exist and they need to shine. All we have to do is make it simpler and more fun for people to do that.
Not to be rude Rob, but the issue is player member numbers of the factions who are active. we have 2 dustmen, 1 athar, 0 Xaositects, and the list goes on.
I can see this idea of proxies benefiting the server I feel. I plan to keep watch of this thread and see how it goes :)
Darkrob,Nov 2 2017 wrote: Then itÂ’s no longer Planescape. ItÂ’s simply Forgotten Realms in the Planes. ItÂ’s the Factions that makes Planescape what it is. They need to exist and they need to shine. All we have to do is make it simpler and more fun for people to do that.
Not to be rude Rob, but the issue is player member numbers of the factions who are active. we have 2 dustmen, 1 athar, 0 Xaositects, and the list goes on.
I can see this idea of proxies benefiting the server I feel. I plan to keep watch of this thread and see how it goes :)
Not sure what you're referring to. I'm defending the idea of Proxies and Factions. I'm simply looking for a way to make it so all factions are useful and player friendly.
I don't think Sinlinara means that factions would be going away, rather they're no longer "member groups" as much as tools for DMs/EMs to employ and technically allow much more aggressive and damning plots since it'd potentially no longer hurt the players in those factions. That's kind of what is often crippling how to use factions since the players in the factions often object to the ideologies that the faction plots might lead them to, and then you have a conflict of whether to kind of scrap the plot to appeal to its members, or maintain the plot and earn the ire of its members.
Now that's not always the case, but in most cases if there's a conflict... one of the sides will lose, which has been the achilles heel of all faction conflicts, as the players seldom like losing, for understandable reasons, there are a number of factors for it, most of which are somewhat out of their control.
