[DGD] Feudalism

[Schmidt, Stephen]

I wasn't thinking so much about canon characters - the level of control
that requires admins to have over players worries me.

Rotating pack of players occupying a number of pre-defined roles is more
what I have in mind.

I was thinking more in terms of there being a set number of positions,
which players fill in rotation. If you manage to become the Duke of
Bananaland, then you gain control over some NPCs (automated) which do your
will when you're not around. If you don't log into the game for a week,
though, the position becomes vacant and a new player (who may need suitable
qualifictions such as some kind of player level, or experience in lower
level positions) can take over the dukedom. There would be some default
settings for the NPCs to use during times of no duke.

One could also make the Duke of Bananaland a fixed character - Sir Carmen
Miranda Chiquita, Duke of Bananaland - and allow different players to play
that character. But that's more structure than I had in mind. I was
thinking that there's a position, different characters can occupy the
position, each player runs one character. I think that'd work too, but my
thoughts had been running the other way.

I was really thinking there'd be a fixed number of castles, and "duke"
means you control one of the castles. If you don't log in you lose control
of your castle, someone else takes it over, and becomes the new duke.

Steve


On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 4:34 AM, Raymond Jennings <shentino at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 9:57 PM, Schmidt, Stephen <schmidsj at union.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > been toying with a version of this for many years myself... but got
> > sidetracked into wargames  :)
> >
> > The problem I ran across was that players are not active 24x7. If players
> > are lord-vassal relations to one another, then what happens when your
> lord
> > is logged out? Or if there's a high position - duke, or something like
> that
> > - is it empty most of the time, when the duke is not logged on?
>
>
> My assumption was that the role was mostly bluebooked with some
> administrative buttons in OOC land.
>
> Interestingly enough though ICO just posted a public message on their forum
> about having a problem with patrons going poof for extended periods of
> time, but still having the characters mop up favor points even without
> being logged in.
>
> Their solution was having patronage relations between characters dropped if
> one of them went offline for more than a month or so...maybe something
> similir would apply here.
>
> Basically, make the relation between lord and vassal a real one, but keep
> it mostly bluebooked unless RPed, give both sides some relevant buttons to
> push, and have an arrangement to have the relationship broken if one side
> goes awol for too long...or maybe have the vacant role "eschated" (snicker)
> to game staff?
>
> you do make a point about maybe having noble roles be interchangeable masks
> that different players could occupy.
>
> Some RPs have this sort of thing with the concept of a "canon" character, a
> position that can be occupied by any trustworthy player, with guidelines
> and supervision.  I think this sort of thing also came up once before on
> this very list.
>
> Is that what you were suggesting?
>
>
> > Or can any
> > player who happens to be logged on take the job of the duke, if he's the
> > highest-ranking player currently logged in?
> >
> > A feudal system requires long-term relationships between players. That
> may
> > be hard to model in a traditional MUD environment where new players are
> > created frequently, old ones disappear without warning.
> >
> > I came to the conclusion that it would have to be the other way around -
> a
> > player could take any role in the feudal hierarchy that happened to be
> > vacant at a given time. So someone would always be Duke of Bananaland,
> one
> > player replacing another in the role as people logged in and out of the
> > game.
>
>
> Would this be an NPC puppetmastered by a rotating player base, or a
> rotating pack of characters occupying a single role?
>
>
>
> > That raises some continuity problems of its own, though - the person
> > to whom a vassal owes loyalty may change frequently.
> >
> > I didn't get very far through that thought process before I gave up and
> did
> > wargames instead.
> >
> > Steve
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 12:43 AM, Raymond Jennings <shentino at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hey, would it be feasible to use a feudalism hierarchy to organize
> > > characters?
> > >
> > > Maybe a vassalage system, where each noble PC can have an optional lord
> > and
> > > zero or more vassals, and then they can be given buttons to push about
> > the
> > > land they have.
> > >
> > > There could well be PCs or NPCs as serfs at the bottom.
> > >
> > > I've been bouncing this idea around in my head for awhile, why not ask
> > the
> > > dgd list about it?
> > >
> > > I'm thinking of a game world geographically as large as England,
> possibly
> > > with some constraints to discourage the "players go spread out as much
> > > wilderness as they can, but then spread too thinly to socialize"
> problem
> > > cited in one of shannon's skotos articles.
> > > ____________________________________________
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