Posts made by Balerion

The ad on the first page has been tweaked to reflect that we're now less than a month away from the end of King Baelor's reign, which eventually will lead to some significant changes to the nature of the court at King's Landing.

@magee101 Technically, everyone on our game is a roster character, but yes, a pre-CGed character is what I recommend largely based on what you said, that you've only a passing familiarity with the setting, but also because they're an easy way to dive into the game and seeing if it's for you. If you decide you want to CG your own character after trying it out, well, by all means.

@magee101 said in Blood of Dragons:

@balerion If you dont know anything about GRRM's works aside from dragons and politics, how accessible is BoD?

Our general recommendation in this case is that you play a previously CGed character, ideally one who'll be based in King's Landing, as those areas are the most "typical" fantasy-medieval (Dorne is a bit more "Arabian Nights"). There's plenty of information on the web, on wikis such as ours and our articles for the game and so on. We've just entered the final year of the reign of King Baelor the Blessed, and the wiki article there will give you a sense of what things are like in his reign.

@misadventure said in Blood of Dragons:

Adding a spin to @magee101 's question:

How well would you do if you have a reasonable grasp of fictional medieval politics and low fantasy settings?

I think you could do pretty well! As I noted above, this is the last year of Baelor's reign -- he's become increasingly driven by religious visions and overzealous piety -- so that's one source of tensions and friction. His young cousin Prince Daeron just got married to a princess of the rival kingdom of Dorne as part of Baelor's efforts to make peace, and so that's another source of potential friction. There's room for people to advance at court, and we've created a court structure that tries to divy up court positions in various areas, and give a hierarchy people can aim for. (There's a similar file for the court in Sunspear, as well.)

Ad refreshed to reflect the current IC circumstances on the game.

As we keep being brought up in this thread, guess that's an invitation to contribute.

@auspice said in A Game of Thrones MUX Discussion:

If you get the permission of the IP holder (in this case, GRRM / the show creators), they'll gladly let you use the game rules provided you don't claim to own any of it, etc etc... I think the issue more comes back to them being afraid of the IP owner circling back on them, since they only have permission to create the game rules.

This is in accord with our understanding from Chris Pramas, whom we've conversed with on occasion. To quote him:

As you are no doubt aware, the rights for A Song of Ice and Fire are sliced up into many pieces. We have no electronic rights at all; those belong to other companies. We could not license our game out for any kind of software treatment. Properties like Mutants & Masterminds that we own outright are different. We made a deal with the Storium people to support Freedom City, for example.

@thenomain said in A Game of Thrones MUX Discussion:

and keeping Nym entirely out of the loop.

Just underscoring that this is quite correct. There's no reason at all put Linda and I "in the loop" in the first place if you're asking George's permission. It's his bailiwick.

@packrat said in A Game of Thrones MUX Discussion:

'People' in this context being Nymeria

This is incorrect. Posted this on this very forum:

The one thing a lot of them (GRRM included) cite which I think is the wrong thing to take out of the Bradley situation, though, is the idea that if they do not actively police the use of their copyright, they can "lose" it. But this is an idea taken from trademark law which doesn't apply to copyright. A more accurate thing to say is that there have been cases where the court has seemed to feel that a person being aware of unauthorized use of their IP and allowing it to continue could largely forfeit any hopes of receiving punitive damages if they changed their mind about it at a later date.

@il-volpe said in A Game of Thrones MUX Discussion:

He's said that he /wanted/ them made for his IPs.

I assume "them" is MU*s. Got a link? Could be something to add to the SSM!

@ZombieGenesis IMO, if your game is a private game with just a handful of invited characters, and you're basically using the MUX framework as a virtual table top kind of thing, I don't think you really need permission. I'm not sure what "semi-private" would be in the context of a MUX, but if it's more public than private, I would think that asking George's permission would be the appropriate thing to do, given his expressed wishes on such things. (Also, if you got George's permission, it sounds like GR would be okay with the use of SIFRP in such a scenario, too.)

Definitely agree with sticking to one or maybe two areas. It's appealing to be able to have large chunks of Westeros available to play in, but Westeros is too damned big to really support it unless you've a very large player base (which doesn't seem compatible with a private/semi-private game). As far as custom houses go, in a small game, I wouldn't see a problem. But you may find some or most of the invited players prefer to stick to what they know, which tends to be the Great Houses. I guess the benefit of a private game is you can discuss this with folks beforehand and see what they want.

As far as canon and time period goes, the Blackfyre rebellions certainly offer a lot of space for political play on larger and smaller scales. I'd pick the run-up or aftermath of the 3rd rebellion myself, because it's so lightly sketched (for now, anyways) and means you've a wide latitude both with filling in the blanks of the start conditions (who supported what side, etc.) and just easily going off in your own direction if that proves of interest to your players. Obviously, a "what if" version of the 2nd Blackfyre Rebellion could also be a thing. Though I'd go further back than the usual point, picking up from Aegon V's death and the immediate aftermath of his having legitimized all of his bastards. Seems like it'd be ripe for intrigues and conflicts.

@deadculture I would say it is primarily due to a lack of time and coding experience on my part. I have copious notes and ideas for the system, but have never found the time or energy to devote myself to it. But we don't see a conflict between having combat code and being consent based. By participating in fighting, you do consent to some damage, though yes, you won't be killed or maimed against your will. Elendor was rather harsher in that regard as you had no say in what happened if you were knocked down to 0 health.

The 1-10 scale for skills on Cuendillar was the original, home made system. Some years after Tales of Ta'veren shut down, Nynaeve implemented the CharGen and skill system from Tales of Ta'veren instead of continuing with the old system. I believe the ToT system was based on Ars Magica.

No, that was never the case, at least not for all types of characters. The ad used to say that knowledge of the books is helpful but not required, except for certain concepts. So the revised language is in fact somewhat more restrictive in that suggests that familiarity with the books is best, especially for those who want to CG characters. The same limits as before apply in regards to specific concepts definitely requiring book knowledge, but the details get somewhat lengthy for an ad.

There's two components, Influence and Renown, and the basics are detailed in http://www.westeros.org/BoD/Helpfiles/Category:System::Renown and http://www.westeros.org/BoD/Helpfiles/Category:System::Influence.

Additionally, +help cdb status on the game lists the available commands for showing current rankings and modifiers. There's still some work to be done to transition from our old system, but the core is in place.

Updated the ad in the first post as it had some outdated plot and policy information. We're now trying to steer those who have not read the books almost entirely to pre-CGed characters, though we don't mind making an exception if someone is willing to do their research. We've also finally launched the new Status system to help invigorate the court politics.

@ZombieGenesis All I can say is that neither myself nor Nymeria have ever approached anyone working on another ASoIaF/GoT game. I cannot say with 100% certainty that some of our staff might not have done so, but if so it was done without our knowledge or approval. I must admit to being very dubious, especially given the claim that the staffer invited the other game to bring their ideas over to our game, as all of our staff knows that we would never consider such a scenario. We're rather set in our ways and have always had a very specific vision for our game.

The fact that we have permission from GRRM to run our own game does not mean that we have any right to shut down games who wrongfully use his IP, nor have we ever attempted to. The only one who can do that is GRRM and he does not want to spend his time chasing down "fans" who disregard the fact that he has said that he does not want games run without his permission.

Likely this confusion over whether we have tried to shut down any other ASoIaF/GoT games arises from the fact that we do not allow any discussion of such games on our game, any more than we allow discussion of or links to fan fiction.

@lordbelh Yes, that's a straightforward approach. I feel the reason you need to have some code-verifiable method in place, however, is to actually have a check to make sure someone's not spinning OOC knowledge of who started a rumor as IC knowledge of same. My feeling is that coded systems need to be as air tight as possible against that sort of abuse.

It's true that this would then limit the possibilities of people RPing out bluffing about something, though... I suppose a solution would be to allow a person to spend some influence to try and attach a name to a rumor, and then people could investigate that detail separately if they decide they don't trust it. Could go pretty deep down that rabbit hole, though. But something else to ponder. Thanks!

@Gingerlily As far as the rumor portion of it goes, one of the features that have been discussed is the fact that if someone successfully investigates a rumor -- finding the person who actually started it -- then suddenly everyone who has heard the rumor will also know the identity. It's been argued that this takes a lever of power from the successful investigator, since they can hold over the person's head the fact that they know but are willing to keep that to themselves.

Not quite had the time to think through how to fix the code to allow this. Obviously the idea would be that a successful investigator would have some way to share their knowledge in a code-verifiable way (like +rumor/share then also sharing the identity), and also perhaps provide them some method to readily make the identity more widely known. Though now that I think of it, the way to make the identity widely known would be to start a fresh rumor implicating the person in what ever gossip they were spreading... maybe not so tough to sort out after all.

@Bobotron Oops. Not sure what happened. Here's the help files: http://pastie.org/10459001

@Gingerlily I found the original Sanguinis Nobilis code for their rumor system -- they posted it long ago on a now-defunct FTP site, but fortunately we saved it. It may give you some ideas for approaches:

The code: http://pastie.org/10451992
The help file: http://pastie.org/10451995

@Gingerlily You're welcome. I think we could probably have done more early on to make it plain to people how the system works (in fact, we're working on something related to that right now), but the rumor system is one of our favourite pieces of code. As I noted, we can't take credit for the basic idea, its heavily inspired by what Sanguinis Nobilis used, but it worked quite well to integrate into a fantasy setting with politics as well.

I do think that having an equilibrium that Influence strives to return to reduces the risk of the system being abused, as massive changes can't happen simply through players ganging up on someone else via the code; the changes have to be reflected in actual position changes.

The Influence part of the system of Blood of Dragons works by having each player come out of CharGen with a base Influence score, created through a formula that looks at House, certain Assets and Flaws and official positions. Influence can be spent on the Rumor system (influenced by code from Sanguinis Nobilis) and also gained or lost through targetted positive or negative rumors, but this only affects the current score, not the base score, and over time Influence gradually returns to the base score. Changes in status, such as a marriage or a new position, is the only way to permanently alter the base score. Influence can also help a character in gaining a better than expected marriage or a new position as Staff takes it into consideration when approving such requests.

By having the base score be the equilibrium that Influence strives to return to over time, there's no possibility of players colluding to use rumors to completely destroy someone's position permanently; that would actually take the character suffering a permanent change in status, such as losing their place at court or being disinherited.

@Bobotron

Those things can't happen, no. I've seen many games set in "historical" time periods within fantasy or SF settings that have similar strictures, so I can't say we're unique in this. Players are free to work towards things that aren't contradictory to the set theme and canonical events (ETA: I realize I should add that you can work towards things that can't ultimately succeed, of course; players sometimes do that, even realizing that their character will fail, because it makes for a good story).

One aspect of this is simply the fact that doing otherwise means that soon enough only the players on the game will feel that the setting is familiar to them. If some prospective player, fresh off reading the books, learns we're a game set in the year 166AC but the king is not Baelor the Blessed but instead Hagar the Horrible of House Greyjoy, to understand why that's the case will take ignoring what they learned from reading the books and instead learning what is likely terribly complicated game history.

In a somewhat similar vein, the reason we have 2000+ characters in our database is so that there's a consistent family tree for everyone, which allows for greater consistency than the more usual "and here is the long-lost-brother we've never mentioned before' approach to things that games without roster systems have often ended up with. We place a deal of value on players having the feeling that they understand the time period, the setting, and the basics of their family without having it upended whenever someone else feels like.

@Bobotron

The information we have provides a few points on the roadmap. They haven't prevented us from doing major plot events, including the sacking of castles, outbreaks of private war, murders, etc. that are entirely invented by our players and staff.

I think it's much like any game that sets itself within a historical milieu (invented or otherwise), where the point isn't alternate history but playing in and with notable events... with the added bonus for players that sometime it's not clear to them if events that are happening are "just" created plots or actual "setting history" GRRM provided to us for use on the game which has not been otherwise published.

Alas, no more dragons in our time period, though.

@icanbeyourmuse,

Thank you for taking the time to look at the application process, as it helps to see what points potential players could get stuck at

The previous MU* experience question is mostly there so we know how likely it is that the person is going to need a lot of help with the basics of using a MUSH and if they have any experience with a MU* - based character CG since having previously CGed characters on games with the stat/skill/background CG type makes it easier getting through our CG. But that said, we have quite often permitted players who seem to have a basic understanding of the setting and who have a reasonable initial character concept to CG characters even if they've never MU*ed or even RPed (in some other format, i.e. forum, chat, tabletop) before. As to RP logs, it does say there are alternatives (which in all cases has meant that we waive the requirement and give a provisional approval which we'll revisit; we've never done the 'test scene' sort of thing.)

We're quite open to players adjusting the character concept after initial play, and in fact in some cases we've allowed tweaks months after initial CG when a player realizes certain aspects of the sheet (such as the personality Defects that are available to be taken as Flaws) never really hashed out or have become extremely minor character points compared to what developed as they played. Radical changes in concept would be more difficult in our system, it's true, but we've helped players CG a new character (or find an already-CGed character) that fits the concept they realize they'd rather play.

We definitely see the argument for a gentle entry into the game for new players. Our solution to that is for players to play a CGed character for awhile first to get a feel for the game, decide if it's for them, and to get some experience with things like what a CGed character looks like and what's expected in the process. Quite a lot of players take us up on that, starting with a Cameo or other CGed character for a few days, a week, a month before rostering and getting a character to CG for themselves -- whatever they feel comfortable with, really.