EMPIRE! CWBG VIII: It's Not An Event Without A Few Corpses

[SamBurke]

I believe you'll need to roll a regent's stats (unless Doge's follow something similar to Qzare law where if they're captured they stop being Doges in which case you can just roll for your next in line) As for whether you'd use Inigo's or the Regent/Heir's stats this round seeing as this was a capture announced in this round's opening I'm not sure. I suppose checking what happened when Wandao was captured and whether his stats were used the next round or Hanyeo's were might be good for getting a historical lock on things though I'm not sure if the Salterri, being NPC at the time, were tracked as closely on who was leading them and what scores were being used.

As a sidenote, does Guilder law still follow that the richest Merchant Prince becomes Doge with that usually being the heir of the previous Merchant Prince since they inherit their father's holdings or did that change/was never actually a thing?

That law is still in effect, though the Doge line usually stays preserved for several reasons:

1. The Doge's holdings are passed down, and are usually focused on the things that Guilder is interested in over the Doge's rule, and thus have increased in value. Also, the Doge is more knowledgeable in areas he's invested in, so will naturally make more laws there, even when balanced by the Committee of Commerce.

2. The Committee of Commerce is made up of the richest Princes, and they and their children (and children's children, actually) are unable to attempt to become Doge, in order to keep them minimally biased.

3. The Doge has enough visibility that a good Doge can make a brand out of himself, and get a lot of people to invest in his company. He has the most face-time in public compared to any other figure.

As it is, I'll roll up Vizini's stats, and get things started there... He is the Doge-elect, presumably. Unless, of course, there's an overthrow...

[lt_murgen]

RE: Luck votes.

I would like to cast my vote for everyone gaining a Luck every other active round, but since that isn't the current system I'll do Luck votes for this round.

Aedriled
MorphBark
TBD

Another thought would be to randomly roll for which region get luck. Say, 4 regions per round. Rulers of those lands get +1. With over 130+ regions and NPC regions, it could work.

Of course, we would have to rule only +1 per round per ruler for large regions, just to be fair.

[Logic]

I didn't do it!

I only followed the International council thread, and cast my votes according to my perception of value added to the conversation. My third vote was a tie between you and Aedilred, and since I had already cast a vote for the opposition party (Rizban) I figured I should vote outside the accepted power blocks.*

*Actually, I flipped a coin.

[TheDarkDM]

I would hope the forum rules would help to prevent anything too graphic showing up in the first place, to be honest, beyond the bare fact of mentioning of it. That said I suppose if anyone's particularly sensitive there's children's literature out there that would presumably be forum-appropriate (children's literature, after all) that's still perfectly nightmare-inducing. (I think some Robin Jarvis stuff permanently traumatised me, and I'm not alone in that!)

You'd be surprised what you can get past the forum filter with a little bit of narrative artifice.

Wait, of the whole world?

They don't call them madmen for nothing.

[Aedilred]

Another thought would be to randomly roll for which region get luck. Say, 4 regions per round. Rulers of those lands get +1. With over 130+ regions and NPC regions, it could work.

Of course, we would have to rule only +1 per round per ruler for large regions, just to be fair.

This is a thing for Morph, but I think it comes down to the question of what Luck is for - meaning in both senses of "what does it reflect" and "how is it used". Is it there to reward player activity, continuity, engagement, quality of writing, popularity, to compensate for other attributes, or just handed out on the basis of luck itself? And what should it do in the game - and how does it reward or reflect the quality that caused it to be given out in the first place?

In terms of how things are at the moment: with voting (or for that matter Reader's suggestion), a player/ruler is realistically going to get at most a +1 every other round. I'm not sure anyone's got a +1 Luck twice in a row under the voting, if nothing else because people dont' like voting for the same players twice in a row. With a randomised system it would depend on the figures, but assuming say 4-5 players get it per round, and we have ~25 players, that's on average a +1 increase every 5 rounds or so assuming an equal chance (which if randomised by region it wouldn't be).

I reckon the average ruler in this game rules for about 30-35 years, or 6-7 rounds. Some go longer, at 10-12 rounds, but they're exceptional and concentrated in a couple of regions. Average starting Luck should logically be around 3, given that nobody's cleared 8 for a while and not everyone clears 4. So assuming you get Luck at what is these days pretty much the maximum rate, Luck 10 is out of reach unless you roll a 4 to start with and your ruler lasts at least ten rounds (eleven, if you want to use the 10 score for anything). It could easily take four rounds just to clear Luck 5.

In fact it's not even as good as that. The average Luck score in the game as of the start of last round was 2.8, which is by far the lowest of any attribute (Faith is the only other one under 5, at 4.3). Getting even moderate Luck scores is obviously hard, and requires a degree of luck in itself. Nobody in R22 had a score higher than 5.

Which doesn't really matter so long as Luck remains limited in use: at the moment there's the chance of a 1/ruler Luck 5 special, assassins rolls... and that's pretty much it bar informal stuff. Should it be made more useful, or, conversely, easier to acquire? Or both, or neither? Is it just there to help people feel good about themselves, or should it have a meaningful game effect?

I get the impression this is an issue we've been skirting since magic was removed and Morph stopped handing Luck out directly - and I suspect part of the reason the Luck voting lost a bit of steam is that Luck doesn't feel like a meaningful attribute at the moment, so getting bonuses to it doesn't really matter.

I don't actually have an answer, I'm just posing the question.

[BladeofObliviom]

Those are the stupid ones. The smart ones enslave the stupids.

Clearly you should have been using Horse-people instead, then.

[Elemental]

Luck to...
Waylander for setting a crazed sorcerer loose on us.
Logic for continuing to push for world peace even though people keep trying to kill each other.
And Rain Dragon because the Kaiser is interesting.


Also... Damn it Guilder. The Qzare lies dying and you steal his sword while trying to arrange a marriage?



Anyways... Now to think about how to deal with strife while purposefully causing more...


Edit: Also... The war in Salteire... Has it ended with Zuida Rongyao and Li Tailong's deaths?

[TheDarkDM]

Edit: Also... The war in Salteire... Has it ended with Zuida Rongyao and Li Tailong's deaths?

A little death never stopped a good war.

[Elemental]

A little death never stopped a good war.

One can hope though, given that the war was primarily about the disappearance of one Qzare and secondarily about which Qzare was the Qzariest. One would hope both dying would solve that.

[QuintonBeck]

Second, would it be legal to build a tech to turn one resource into another resource? Specifically, I'm thinking that the giant frozen eggs in region 96 could be ice dragon eggs. On their own, these eggs could be used for food or whatever, but with the right tech they could be safely hatched, turning stacks of giant frozen eggs into stacks of ice dragons.

Dredging this up from a couple pages back.

Sympol once had strange eggs appear and Tychris spent some turns researching them and studying them (maybe even devoted a Great Project to them) and eventually they became a resource. A bit of a different scenario but still perhaps somewhat apt. I don't think you can currently outright do anything to convert a resource to another resource, for that to happen there would have to be GM adjudication and further I think it's been avoided adding dragons or other "larger and more powerful" creature-types as resources out of respect to the lower (perhaps heightening?) magic level of Telluris. That said, my suggestion would be to talk to Morph about it and see if you could work a Great Project or some such to increase the chances of in a future round a development coming from said eggs.

As for Luck, I've never played for Luck. I liked when it was a potential gateway to Magic (as zabbarot pursued it and even utilized it as) however while it still didn't interest me it did run the risk of having folks rush for Magic by playing up Luck stuff which led to the voting and then Magic was removed and then Luck became weirdly Mechanical which I personally didn't care for but wasn't affected by all that much either so didn't really have reason to be concerned by it.

If I had my way Luck would be a way to cash in on something you wanted to do but wasn't exactly covered in the rules or wasn't allowed by the rules. Nothing gigantic that would change the face of the world (at least not on a global or immediate scale) but I think something like Reader's potential desire to convert a resource into another resource could be a luck thing. I've got no real tangible mechanics on how that would work or when it would apply namely because it would be a bit looser mechanically than the other stats. Essentially, I'd like Luck to be able to perform Miracles like a Faith 10 but without the necessarily religious connotations and with more focus on things a player wanted to accomplish over things a character wanted to accomplish.

I also think the Luck voting system works fine, it's just a matter of putting a deadline on when voting closes and the votes are tallied and put into the OP. My suggestion would be sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday since usually no one votes after that anyway (assuming normal round closure time)

On the note of Luck

Luck Standings
WaylanderX - 5
Rizban - 3
Aedilred - 2
Logic - 2
Rain Dragon - 2
DarkDM - 1
Morph Bark - 1
Quinton - 1

@Elemental: Qzariest is an A+ golden word

[Elemental]

@Elemental: Qzariest is an A+ golden word

Thank you. I like to think it sums up everything quite well.

[Aedilred]

Edit: Also... The war in Salteire... Has it ended with Zuida Rongyao and Li Tailong's deaths?

One can hope though, given that the war was primarily about the disappearance of one Qzare and secondarily about which Qzare was the Qzariest. One would hope both dying would solve that.

No peace has yet been officially agreed, but I believe a ceasefire is effectively in place. In any case I think the will (on both sides) and ability (on at least one side) to continue the war is somewhat diminished.

However, Rongyao's son has already been crowned as Qzare and Tailong's daughter acclaimed as Qzarina (coronation to happen imminently), so the issue of Qzaredom is still on the table.

[TheDarkDM]

No peace has yet been officially agreed, but I believe a ceasefire is effectively in place. In any case I think the will (on both sides) and ability (on at least one side) to continue the war is somewhat diminished.

However, Rongyao's son has already been crowned as Qzare and Tailong's daughter acclaimed as Qzarina (coronation to happen imminently), so the issue of Qzaredom is still on the table.

They should really just get married and settle the question for good.

[Elemental]

They should really just get married and settle the question for good.

I am in total agreement. All we need to do is hold the pair of them at sword point, find a celebrant and two witnesses and the issue is resolved.

[Morph Bark]

Just to note: Tianshi was made Qzarina at the soonest time under Salterri law (because obscure cultural reasons). The official coronation (or rather, re-coronation) is happening now because she's coming of age and taking on her rights and duties in official capacity.

[TheDarkDM]

Just to note: Tianshi was made Qzarina at the soonest time under Salterri law (because obscure cultural reasons). The official coronation (or rather, re-coronation) is happening now because she's coming of age and taking on her rights and duties in official capacity.

Will there be an event? If so, will I have to crash it?

[QuintonBeck]

Just to note: Tianshi was made Qzarina at the soonest time under Salterri law (because obscure cultural reasons). The official coronation (or rather, re-coronation) is happening now because she's coming of age and taking on her rights and duties in official capacity.

Yeah, where's the Triad Council's invitation! *shakes fist* We're neighbors dammit!

[TheDarkDM]

On an entirely separate track, I took the liberty of rolling your TN for this round, zab.

[Aedilred]

Sympol once had strange eggs appear and Tychris spent some turns researching them and studying them (maybe even devoted a Great Project to them) and eventually they became a resource. A bit of a different scenario but still perhaps somewhat apt. I don't think you can currently outright do anything to convert a resource to another resource, for that to happen there would have to be GM adjudication and further I think it's been avoided adding dragons or other "larger and more powerful" creature-types as resources out of respect to the lower (perhaps heightening?) magic level of Telluris.

Speaking of which, those dragons mentioned at the Second Grand Ball... Was that a false alarm, or some serious foreshadowing?

[Lord_Burch]

They should really just get married and settle the question for good.

And, of course, fight a war a few rounds later on who inherits what.

[QuintonBeck]

Speaking of which, those dragons mentioned at the Second Grand Ball... Was that a false alarm, or some serious foreshadowing?

The Triumvirate has discussed it and believe it was a spiritual sign of omen regarding the Grand Ball and the future events regarding Brother Adam and the Temple Crisis. That's the Chuo wa Mashahidi's best guess anyway but they could be wrong...

And, of course, fight a war a few rounds later on who inherits what.

Or establish a separate Imperial Dynasty not connected to the holdings of the Priory or the Heartlands (no idea how that would work mechanically though...)

And I did get your message Morph when we discussed Imeprial lines and control of land but your inbox was full so no response. Essentially I was basing my assumptions off of the Roman Empire and ASoIaF

[ImperatorV]

Speaking of which, those dragons mentioned at the Second Grand Ball... Was that a false alarm, or some serious foreshadowing?

We don't know. The Triad's theory for a while was that the dragons were going to come out of the Pit of Sudelphir - which is bunk now, so now there are no real ideas as to what it means.

EDIT: Or possibly what Quinton said above. Forgot about that one.

ALSO: LUCK VOTES

Way for villains crashing parties.
Logic for holding the latest event to be graced by murderers.
Quinton for having a leader that is not highly aggressive or clinically insane when confronted with the above.

[Morph Bark]

Or establish a separate Imperial Dynasty not connected to the holdings of the Priory or the Heartlands (no idea how that would work mechanically though...)

And I did get your message Morph when we discussed Imeprial lines and control of land but your inbox was full so no response. Essentially I was basing my assumptions off of the Roman Empire and ASoIaF

That's one thing Rizban and I discussed a long time ago, before Hanyeo went bonkers.

And when was that, because I dunno when that was and have no idea what exactly you're talking about now other than a vague idea. I don't even remember talking about Imperial lines with you via PM recently.


Anyhoo! Here is the thread! I've already sent out a bunch of invites, but got tired of writing so darn many. I think I missed Irvest, who was gonna get a personalized one as well that would also ask for him to bring his dwarven son along. Other rulers who haven't gotten one yet most likely would get one as well. I'll put a general invite write-up with my actions post later.

[TheDarkDM]

That's one thing Rizban and I discussed a long time ago, before Hanyeo went bonkers.

And when was that, because I dunno when that was and have no idea what exactly you're talking about now other than a vague idea. I don't even remember talking about Imperial lines with you via PM recently.


Anyhoo! Here is the thread! I've already sent out a bunch of invites, but got tired of writing so darn many. I think I missed Irvest, who was gonna get a personalized one as well that would also ask for him to bring his dwarven son along. Other rulers who haven't gotten one yet most likely would get one as well. I'll put a general invite write-up with my actions post later.

Well, now the question becomes: do the guards search the Teotlkan's attendants?

[DurkBlanston]

BTW, what are the rules on adopting technologies again? Like if I wanted to adopt Dinosaur riding into Werewolf Riding or what have you, what kind of action is that?

It's a 2 round project afaik and it simply makes that technology applicable to the new resource, doesn't make a new technology. Berunda Riding for instance is still Berunda Riding but thanks to mine and Aedilred's projects we worked on together Berunda riding now works for Perytons and Huma birds.

[Kitsanth]

I reckon the average ruler in this game rules for about 30-35 years, or 6-7 rounds. Some go longer, at 10-12 rounds, but they're exceptional and concentrated in a couple of regions. Average starting Luck should logically be around 3, given that nobody's cleared 8 for a while and not everyone clears 4. So assuming you get Luck at what is these days pretty much the maximum rate, Luck 10 is out of reach unless you roll a 4 to start with and your ruler lasts at least ten rounds (eleven, if you want to use the 10 score for anything). It could easily take four rounds just to clear Luck 5.

Based on my own experience, one must be very lucky to gain luck.

Vanya has gained a single luck point in 11 rounds (and I am fairly sure that luck increase was assigned by GM), his heir Zhenya will be starting with 4 luck and is also likely to rule for at least 10 rounds (she rolled several 4s, as is befitting the chosen heir).

Admittedly, with RD and myself having abstained from luck voting since it began, we may have been hurting our chances.

[QuintonBeck]

We don't know. The Triad's theory for a while was that the dragons were going to come out of the Pit of Sudelphir - which is bunk now, so now there are no real ideas as to what it means.

EDIT: Or possibly what Quinton said above. Forgot about that one.

ALSO: LUCK VOTES

Way for villains crashing parties.
Logic for holding the latest event to be graced by murderers.
Quinton for having a leader that is not highly aggressive or clinically insane when confronted with the above.

Well, yeah, there was that theory too which was a cool one, but like you said got debunked.

I'm glad someone appreciated a proper coward responding in a more human way than the badass bravados (and grave robbers of Guilder )

Also, Imp your inbox is full!

That's one thing Rizban and I discussed a long time ago, before Hanyeo went bonkers.

And when was that, because I dunno when that was and have no idea what exactly you're talking about now other than a vague idea. I don't even remember talking about Imperial lines with you via PM recently.


Anyhoo! Here is the thread! I've already sent out a bunch of invites, but got tired of writing so darn many. I think I missed Irvest, who was gonna get a personalized one as well that would also ask for him to bring his dwarven son along. Other rulers who haven't gotten one yet most likely would get one as well. I'll put a general invite write-up with my actions post later.

When we were discussing Rongyao's military score for this last round's battle. It was like 1 message

Based on my own experience, one must be very lucky to gain luck.

Vanya has gained a single luck point in 11 rounds (and I am fairly sure that luck increase was assigned by GM), his heir Zhenya will be starting with 4 luck and is also likely to rule for at least 10 rounds (she rolled several 4s, as is befitting the chosen heir).

Admittedly, with RD and myself having abstained from luck voting since it began, we may have been hurting our chances.

Any particular reason for abstaining? IE would you prefer it was done a different way?

On the note of the current system though.

Luck Standings
WaylanderX - 6
Logic - 3
Rizban - 3
Aedilred - 2
Quinton - 2
Rain Dragon - 2
DarkDM - 1
Morph Bark - 1

[ImperatorV]

Inbox=Cleared. Also, when you think about it the apparent eagerness of so many world leaders to get themselves killed is staggering. Also would expect more secret service type stuff to keep them alive - but then again that was the one big thing that set Hrathan-Tuor apart in the early days so maybe that's just me.

[Kitsanth]

Any particular reason for abstaining? IE would you prefer it was done a different way?

I forget the exact specifics I cited at the time, there was something about a show of solidarity in following the lead of my ally and not liking what is basically a popularity contest.

The system does work well enough, though it is fairly predictable as to how a lot votes will go. Whoever holds the most interesting event in a round will inevitably get a lot of votes.


edit: to clarify, I fully believe that people who do cool things should get cool stuff

[Aedilred]

Inbox=Cleared. Also, when you think about it the apparent eagerness of so many world leaders to get themselves killed is staggering. Also would expect more secret service type stuff to keep them alive - but then again that was the one big thing that set Hrathan-Tuor apart in the early days so maybe that's just me.

To be fair, my principal delegate at the Council wasn't a major political figure (although he was the heir to a local governor), and having already "died" once and been turned into a Tellurian cyborg wasn't too bothered about dying again and was aware he was pretty expendable. Once his wife was out of the room, the main reason he stuck around (besides general stubbornness) was to do what he could to assist the survival of people more important than him (both generally, and with regard to the kingdom) who were otherwise at risk, most specifically Rion, Tansan and Tailong. Ah well, two out of three ain't bad.

I think "only" three world leaders actually died: one of whom was there as a hostage anyway, and another seemed to be a zombie or something.