MP: Chronicles_MA - General Game Discussion

[Tifone]

I'm totally in favour of this map - even if the lack of chokepoints sounds a bit of a pity

The setup is great but... are you reeeaally sure about the Single Age?... This seems VERY hard to rationalize eventually and a bit unbalancing...

[quantum_mechani]

Settings sound good... I'm a bit skeptical of the all ages mod working well from an RP perspective though.

[Zeldor]

Lokean:

So what nations will be banned? And probably with single-age only 1 instance of a nation allowed? [so we don't get EA + MA Abysia]

[Lokean]

Look at it this way, the only reason you know that the various incarnations of a nation belong to each age is because they often talk about their past and various nation-altering events. There's nothing preventing these things being spatially distributed rather than chronologically.

Why should EA, MA and LA Pangaea, for example, not just be three splinter sects of a progenitor nation that have each pursued a different path? And that's only assuming that players pick versions of the same nation from different eras.

Rationalising aside, why unbalancing, Tifone?

[Zeldor]

Lokean:

I still think it would be better for that type of the game to allow just 1 instance of every multi-age nation. It should create more interesting game.

[Lokean]

Is it less interesting to have two factions of a splintered nation following different gods, probably even more concerned with the destruction of their heretical brethren than their own nation's rise?

I am, after all, still not used to MP gaming, so perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see, from a narrative perspective, any problem with people adopting different eras of a nation and agreeing between them that [fluff!] is the reason for them both exisitng as separate nations. I mean, if the point is to have an RP/writeup kind of game the least players should be willing to do is work out how the two nations might relate to one another.

[quantum_mechani]

It's obviously a subjective subject, but personally I would find something like LA Ermor and EA Ermor in the same game extremely unthematic. Yes, it's pretty much only from the game text that you know what order things are supposed to happen in, but if you are throwing that out the window there is not a lot to RP from.

I think what Tifone may be getting it is EA nations tend to on average dominate a bit. Extra gems, and in general tougher units and higher levels of magic.

[Tifone]

Well IMHO the thing that "they often talk about their past and various nation-altering events" is very important in this game... we'll probably be heavy on thematicness so one which would i.e. write nostalgic the fall of the glorious Ermorian Legions into the undeads he is leading and then facing those in battle... well...

Hey quantum, that's telepathy, I was preparing the image before you told that

PS: even the Agarthans are heavy on theme, and the water nations...

[Lokean]

Again, I question the problem with spatially distributing them. Say the glorious Ermorian legions, sent into the Utter West on a mission for the New Faith, seeking the means to bring about the immediate reawakening of the New God. There they open the tomb of an old god, thought by the Pontifices to be long reduced to a divine spark, devoid of will, and his malevolent spirit consumes them utterly, tearing the veil between Life and Death. Now, with the very land beneath their feet corrupting as they march, the vast and growing legions of undeath march on the tomb of the New God, far to the east.

Now, obviously, that could be done better, and would vary considerably based on how the players wish to approach it, but I don't see that it's *that* farfetched, Nor does it really change the theme for either nation. In fact, about the only change is the capital of Ashen Empire being some mouldering tomb complex rather than a mouldering shell of Eldregate.

EDIT: I don't have a problem restricting nations to only one incarnation each, since it's really just to increase the chance of somebody getting their favorite version of a nation, but I'm just trying to illustrate that I don't see a loss of thematic quality going hand-in-hand with multiple eras of the same nation being in the game.

Agartha, I'll admit, is a little harder, but if you multiply them into a once world-spanning civilization that has collapsed into a few pocket-cultures in deep cave complexes I think you can still make it work quite readily. One culture never encountered humans, one was slowly replaced by them and the last was worshipped and fell into decadence, eventually becoming a nation of hallowed mummies.

[Tifone]

Lol Lokean, you're now creating your own Dom3 mithology bro Not that it's bad your creativity is nice and I understand where you want to get, I'm just fearing it will create some real confusion... and possibly reduce the RPs material, for eventually having to reduce thematic historical sequences not to clash with the presence of a later or previous incarnation of the same nation in game.

And about Agartha...