Suggestions on RP-Heavy hosted game?

[Shovah32]

Depending on hosting scheduel and era i may be in, so what if im in 2 server games and a PBEM game?

[Morkilus]

Council of Wyrms was fun, but if you couldn't keep up with the diplomacy and voting, you were pretty much screwed. Which was the whole point. I made some terrible decisions and only had 6 provinces the whole game, and without any power or political capital, I just sat there and sold hammers and my votes. The game ended when Dom3 came out. It was neat to have various AAR-like stories and debates on the CoW wiki. Some players like Ygorl and Puffyn were really into it, so I would not call it a total mess. Some people like complication in their games, I hear.

[Hadrian_II]

I'd like to join that game, but i'm not the best player.

[JaydedOne]

I am -far- from the best player, having played in only a handful of MP games and only recently discovering how to exploit and win in the SP game.

All are welcome.

[djo]

Most of the games I've joined, I joined because they have RP elements (I'm not a strong player).

In Council of Wyrms, I think things went mostly well, but we needed a "timer" to put pressure on the game. If we had D3's cumulative VPs, I think it would provided the final perfect element. If you look back at it, we did manage to generate a lot of diplomacy, and nearly one proposition per two or three turns. We stalled late due to a number of things (D3, fatigue, complicated alliances, fear of getting into a war). The theme aspect (all Wyrms) helped a lot, I think.

In the Yarnspinner games (I was in YS2), we were obviously mostly RP. It worked because enough (about 1/2) of the people were able to keep up with the writing. That formed a nice core where we had incentive to keep (a) writing and (b) interacting in character. In YS1, they got by with only 2 active writers. They developed their own theme toward the end (the coming final battle).

My thoughts on how to make it work:

(1) the people have to be into it; no insane max/min people--you've got to be able to do stupid things if it's in character or thematically appropriate (eg, Titan pretender is better for Arco than a Vampire Queen)

(2) theme helps a lot; I like your idea about mapping out who should be hostile or allied, at least initially (eg, Marignon should hate Ermor); good vs evil might work, hot vs cold; I'll try to think of some more unifying themes

(3) you can get by with the forums even though outside websites don't hurt

(4) did I mention the players have to be into it? you want people who are thinking to themselves right now, "wow, now I have an excuse to buy an army of (insert favorite inefficient unit here)"

(4a) and spells! who hasn't wanted to summon one of every (for example) death summons, whether you needed them or not? because it's fun! and possibly thematic for your nation!

(5) and don't forget the trash-talk! Pasha is our pioneer in this area; games with lots of in-character trash talk can be a lot of fun

There's a strong probability I'd join this game

[edit: added 4a]

[okiN]

I might be up for it. I'm in two games already and I don't want to get in over my head, but I'd love to take part in something like this. If the pace is lax enough I'll certainly join.

[quantum_mechani]

I consider CoW a bit of disaster, not just because it drug on forever but because of the emphasis on diplomacy rather than RPing. Diplomacy is already the driving force in most long term games, there is no need to focus on it. Besides, in my opinion it goes against the spirit of dominions- agreements with false gods should be a last resort and almost meaningless when their usefulness expires...

Also, I don't see any problems with players making good strategic choices... personally I like to role play smart characters.

[Truper]

Sure, roleplaying a powergamer; that's the spirit!

[tease mode off]

All that may be needed is to encourage roleplaying and a bit of creative writing. Another idea might be to adopt a diplomatic idea that has come up in history on a number of occasions: "Open Covenants Openly Arrived At." That is, diplomacy is allowed, and encouraged, and encouraged to be in character, but can only be conducted through through the game's thread, not through in-game messages or email.

[WSzaboPeter]

I got an idea. What if in the late age a guild of tradesmen would have formed that gained enough reputation and money to rule the world slowly. Then it was torn apart by the richest houses. Each house would be represented by a nation, and the patriarch/matriarch would be the pretender god and the first born the prophet.
But to gain wealth and reputation one needs to concentrate on this and thus negating the magical practices. This would be represented with the following logic:
Number of votes in the Guild = 10 - Number of Magic levels after the first, cumulative. With a minimum of 1.
I tell you an example:
A patriarch who has Fire 9 and Water 9 (very popular nowadays). Would get 10 - ((9-1) + (9-1)) = -6. Max(1,-6) = 1. So he would get 1 vote.
In the other hand if a patriarch would have Air 3 only, that would mean: 10 - (3-1) = 8 Max (1,8) = 8. So he would get 8 votes.
To get the maximum number of votes you should get only 1 in any magic path. Well, you could take 1 in every magic path, to a nice rainbow pretender, but for this (hopefully rare) case to compensate I suggest that if a patriarch will be adept in more then 3 paths, then he would get a cumulative -1 vote for every path after the 3rd.
So an example: If a patriarch would choose ASDEFNNW for some reason, then he would get 10-1=9 for having 2 levels in Nature, then -4 more for the paths above 3. This would lead to a total of 5 votes.
I'm waiting for suggestions an opinions.

[Cainehill]

Ironhawk said:
I thought that Council of Wyrms turned out to be a total mess? I seem to recall players constantly looking for replacements so they could get out of it.

I don't think Council of Wyrms had any/many more problems than any game in its circumstances. Too many players, where generally speaking, the more players there are, the more are going to lose interest or suddenly realize that they're moving someplace with no internet access just two weeks after the games starts. And, with any game that winds up going for so long (think it nearly a year, possibly a bit more), there are going to be players whose circumstances in life change to where they can't invest the time or interest. (This is as opposed to the ones who were just too thoughtless (being nice here *g*) to realize this from the start.)

As it was, it was quite a nice change from the usual Dom2 games, and with some tweaking it could have been even better. The cumulative VP provinces would have helped a lot, albeit Illwinter making them only get counted once a year isn't nearly as nice as it could have been.