I was Madoc on Realms, and I know I tried to emphasize the difference between the enfeoffed knights, wealth, quality of life and the importance of owning land, and the family/household knights, like @kitteh says, but without any more codified or enforced system to track wealth and financial matters it was hard to really get that across, a Knight of course had it better then a peasant, but it was still a rather spartan life at that point in time. If I recall, Chimneys were a 'new invention' in the Noble's Manor, per the game canon, and those without land often slept in the great hall of someone else's house.

One of the problems I had personally was trying to adjudicate the Pagan squabble, who's paganism was better, who's was right, and a trying to manage a lot of personality conflicts related, it was really difficult to try and police those personality conflicts, and still try to run plots, build new ares (The tourney grounds, etc), that a lot of things like descs, how people portrayed their wealth, and their 16th century castles for manors slipped through the cracks.

I know I personally made some effort to educate and inform people about matters of theme and setting with bbposts, and Townhall Q&A's and such, but there was a lot on my plate personally.

I had some pretty good times on the Battletech MU*'s back in the day, though I found out the hard way that they had terrain collision mechanics coded in the hard way when I hit a lag spike while piloting a hovercraft. Very unfortunate. There was a distinct lack of RP on those games though, saddly, though there was plenty of opportunity for it I think.

@pyrephox said in Valorous Dominion:

I'm struggling a bit with the game's system as someone who ran a small plot, and how to build social challenges that allow me to work off of the characters' skills involved, rather than the players, who may still be trying to understand the theme and setting (as am I) well enough to develop effective reactions.

Anyone more familiar with the system have more insight on how to create social/intellectual challenges and opportunities that rely on characters' competencies rather than players' competencies (and my competence to accurately and usefully convey all the information in the scene that the players might need to make effective choices)?

I've run Pendragon a fair bit, both with my RL group and on Realms and the system can be a bit daunting, I suppose, though it can run a wide variety of scenes and encounters, including social and intellectual. A lot of it is left to narrative, but to work skills in you could call for a Courtesy Roll to set the stage, see how receptive a given NPC is to the players approach, intrigue and recognize skills can be used to convey information about what is going on, who is around, etc. The liberal use of Traits as well is used to help flavor scenes, which is a little harder in a MU* environment given the more static nature of traits, rather then the ebb and flow you find in the tabletop - it encourages a player to play to their traits if they want to grow them, you don't have that here sadly.

In these types of scenes it should be Success / Fail, with Critical rolls being particularly spectacular, an awareness roll could be something like:
Success: You notice the wine is poisoned.
Critical Success: You notice the wine is poisoned, and you see the servant slipping a vial away into his belt.
Failure: The wine is just fine.
Critical Failure: This wine tastes great!

That formula can be used for just about any task or challenge you want to throw in to help with the roleplay, but in the system Failure should always be an interesting option. A Social Faux Pas through a critical failure in a Courtesy roll could lead to an interesting Vindicti, or something along those lines.

@misadventure Yeah, this is probably the saddest I've been hearing about a celebrity death this year, and there have been some great people who've died so far in 2018.

If memory serves, and it has been a while admittedly, I believe the guidance that was put out was wooden halls, or old roman stone halls in some state of disrepair that would leave the approximately as structurally sound/defensible as a wooden hall, thanks to the loss of knowledge to upkeep the buildings, and to allow some aesthetic license for the various manors.

I also don't recall anyone particularly being dirt grovelers in mud and thatch hunts or anything, I do believe some played up the agrarian nature of manor life more then others though, which resulted in that rift of fancy lords and ladies and the 'Dirt Grovelers'.

All the Battletech MU*'s of ages past had insanely complex automated combat that was grid-based as well, not unlike TGG really.

@Packrat There were barely even tools to set the sheet as I recall. I remember doing most of it by hand setting attributes.

This sounds great!

All the Battletech MU*'s of ages past had insanely complex automated combat that was grid-based as well, not unlike TGG really.

@misadventure Yeah, this is probably the saddest I've been hearing about a celebrity death this year, and there have been some great people who've died so far in 2018.

Who would have thought that World of Darkness would replace the Goth/Punk vibe with Hipsters drinking craft beer, slinging artisanal veggie-burgers. The Mohawk has been replaced with the man bun. Fishnet shirts replaced with hand-me-down sweaters...

@pyrephox said in Valorous Dominion:

I'm struggling a bit with the game's system as someone who ran a small plot, and how to build social challenges that allow me to work off of the characters' skills involved, rather than the players, who may still be trying to understand the theme and setting (as am I) well enough to develop effective reactions.

Anyone more familiar with the system have more insight on how to create social/intellectual challenges and opportunities that rely on characters' competencies rather than players' competencies (and my competence to accurately and usefully convey all the information in the scene that the players might need to make effective choices)?

I've run Pendragon a fair bit, both with my RL group and on Realms and the system can be a bit daunting, I suppose, though it can run a wide variety of scenes and encounters, including social and intellectual. A lot of it is left to narrative, but to work skills in you could call for a Courtesy Roll to set the stage, see how receptive a given NPC is to the players approach, intrigue and recognize skills can be used to convey information about what is going on, who is around, etc. The liberal use of Traits as well is used to help flavor scenes, which is a little harder in a MU* environment given the more static nature of traits, rather then the ebb and flow you find in the tabletop - it encourages a player to play to their traits if they want to grow them, you don't have that here sadly.

In these types of scenes it should be Success / Fail, with Critical rolls being particularly spectacular, an awareness roll could be something like:
Success: You notice the wine is poisoned.
Critical Success: You notice the wine is poisoned, and you see the servant slipping a vial away into his belt.
Failure: The wine is just fine.
Critical Failure: This wine tastes great!

That formula can be used for just about any task or challenge you want to throw in to help with the roleplay, but in the system Failure should always be an interesting option. A Social Faux Pas through a critical failure in a Courtesy roll could lead to an interesting Vindicti, or something along those lines.

@thenomain That was my thought too, Re: Dice

I hope those are just artistic dice and not a non standard mechanic.

I never had any problems with Kate on any of the characters I interacted with her with, and one of them was her sibling, but I, like most people who played there, was quite the victim of staff cheating, abuse, etc!

I had some pretty good times on the Battletech MU*'s back in the day, though I found out the hard way that they had terrain collision mechanics coded in the hard way when I hit a lag spike while piloting a hovercraft. Very unfortunate. There was a distinct lack of RP on those games though, saddly, though there was plenty of opportunity for it I think.

This sounds great!

@Packrat There were barely even tools to set the sheet as I recall. I remember doing most of it by hand setting attributes.