Illarion.org

Here are another two of my cents. I have many.


The suggestion I'm going to make, will probably be despised by 99% of the players (mostly because the players are not satisfied with anything.) but I think it is worth to be said though.


The government of Trolls Bane always gives trouble. We've ran through several kinds now, and nothing helped. Started with Lyrenzia, the Triumvirate, the overseers, etc.

What I'm missing is a certain ability of people respecting anything that comes from a player. On one hand the 'chars' want to have a democracy, but don't use it properly and then again they use every chance to mock any person with a leading position and moan about everything at the boards.

What I'm missing in this game is the feeling that Trolls Bane is actually a town with a leadership. What I'm missing is that the chars actually respect it. Is it too hard to roleplay? I understand the players like Stephen Rothman very well when they would withdraw that fast. Try drastic measures in this case? I can't imagine that any player would like to kill off everyone who rebels (even if the possibilities are given) because that would be 90 % of town.

Maybe for a change a GM should take over the rulership of a town. Yes, that's my suggestion. Because I can't see any other possibility how a government would ever be respected.
It would offer a lot of RP opportunity. The town guard could finally be paid properly and there would be more people picking up this job and create a certain atmosphere. (Maybe also the jail could be guarded properly, hm Alkurg?).

It would be forced, yes. But I actually don't mind, because it is an advantage for the roleplay.

I agree with this. I think it's a fairly decent idea.

booo,


I agree that the town isn't great right now, but I want to let it evolve on it's own the way it's going, with an election and stuff

I like the idea.

However one have to keep in mind, that Illarion was created by the original team because of thier wish to be able to have player run governments.
Then again, I have been told that GMs are players too.

One of the things which drew me to this game was the fact that everything was player run, taking over the town with a gm seems a little silly if you ask me. Also, i don't mind if they won't guard the prison, but don't moan when they escape.

If the town falls into chaos, the town falls into chaos, it's what happens.

Having a GM come in instead closes too many doors. Also how would you plan on starting this? Have a GM char say "Im leader now", and everyone just nods because they know its a GM char?

Xalliar wrote:A dictator who invades gobaith?
Like.. .first war, then repression?
Then also real Rebel-groups would be enabled.

'
That would just be going through a lot of nonsense to get back to where we are now?

Goverments changes with time. That is normal. Who really wanted a Lyrenzia for ever? Or a single overseer? Trolls Bane is a nearly "public" place (and can not be leaded very good). Everything is in flow, follows the the main part of the current active players there And they change very often. Within all the years lots of ingame groups were involved within the rulership of Trolls bane and got their chance to be "important", and to follow their ideas and ideals.

I do not think, that we need a change here in this happen. What we need is any kind of support on the active rulers and leaders, so that they have a reason for their existence... some goals and obligations for all players to found more lor less stable goverments.

A GM can not do that very well too. Not for more than some months. From where the really new(bie) GM-Char from outside would get his support by the other players-chars? The Leaders of the ingame communities need their background, their stories in the played and happened world. And.. GMs change in the same frequence like the goverments of Trolls Bane.. or faster

Back to Goals and obligations:
It is a general topic to all players, not only with chars of any goverment... When i work on the map, i have to think regulary about, that we could need reglementations to build houses and to destroy houses of inactive players or to find new owners. The results of my thinks are, that we need something like a symbolic tax against all goverments of territories and groups with buildings outside of the territories. My hopes are, that the players will work together, to pay the regular tax, to keep their buildings, townwalls, castles, streets and shops. But the problem is, that i also believe, that it would not work for a longer time, because of the lack of people, who want to do something like this, who want to own a house and want to pay for it regulary. And what he should do, if communites die out or the players do not want? Do we really can destroy the whole Greenbriar or some other places?

Give what is going on ingame time. How long has a Governor who does things in Trolls Bane been around ? Not even a month (since i really began to get things done).
You cannot expect immediate results.
Put trust in the players to solve ingame matters together.

To build on reasons there is problems:
1) Overall people find it enjoyable roleplay to be against any form of government at least a direct Governor is an easy target to be declared dictator. I mean truely, as Governor, what wrong as Stephen Rothman done to the town ? This is why ingame the arguement is simply that Stephen's past is the reason he is bad.

2) The Character of Stephen himself, he is overall a good character. However I do not change my roleplay so that people will like him. He is proud, noble and unafraid to be heavy handed when he can see the outcome is good for the town. This includes forcing Silverbrand to pay the same land tax anyone owning land in Trolls bane must pay; or acting heavy handed to keep the orcs friendly in trolls bane and also convincing them they need the orc lands.

3) Slow to show improvements. Yes now things are happening; but prior to our friendly map team showing interest in changing Trolls Bane things were moving at an agonizingly slow snails pace. I believe this gave some reason for people to think Stephen was useless as governor.

4) Lack of a working Jail. Yes Trolls Bane has the only official trial system, but it is worthless when no prisoner will remain in jail long enough to face their trial. This adds to people saying how worthless the town guard is because no prisoner has been tried yet, tho many have been caught. (This problem is being thought out, perhaps a new profession of prison guard can be implemented if you have help thoughts to solve this problem definately feel free to PM me them.)

5) Definately it is a change for Trolls Bane to go from a lax government under Pendar, (sure he was captain of the guard but did he really change Trolls bane as radically as Stephen did ?). So it is clear that people would not immediately jump at the change.

6) Lastly this is a major problem that I believe is never addressed but needs to be. People use modern day political thinking to play their characters. In this time, any form of voting was rarely done and corrupt public individuals was common. So for people to be argueing about their right to vote for their leader gives the stench of a modern day democractic thinker seeping through their character.

The prison problem could be solved if you maybe made it an npc. Though you'd have to make it only attack prisoners, which might be tough to do, unless you used a predetermined list, which would mean updating the npc every time a new guard joins...

then you have a problem where Retlak breaks out and beats up the npc guard and then a new one is needed. same goes for any other thieves that are skilled.

itd obviously be fairly tough, and remember, the personw ould have to beat an armored, sword wielding guard unarmored and barehanded.

Just because a GM takes over the town shouldn't mean they get more respect, if we are speaking roleplay. I say, let this play out as is.

Cliu Beothach wrote:Just because a GM takes over the town shouldn't mean they get more respect, if we are speaking roleplay. I say, let this play out as is.

just wait till the bloodskulls are back to power...wont metter who the player is there will be some epic battles. ( meaning less to no respect for anyone in IG terms)

We need a military dictator. He needs to opppress people, kill a race of some kind, try to conquor another town. And make sctrict laws. He needs strong knights/ guards and he needs to be strong. He also needs to FORCE people to go to mass, and pay rediculas taxes. They're will be rebels to take the tyrant down...or they will move. And eventually they well bann together to make a goverment witch all people that created it will sighn. oook. maybe not exactly, but we can just say. "I think this will work."

@Stephen-I love the goverment threads and ideas. It provides great rp and makes hte game feel "real". With our seem to be vast comunity in Illarion. We may be able to make another town active.

haha like i just said Gort...wait for the Bloodskulls...if its the same players there wont be peace for long

Garett Gwenour wrote:To build on reasons there is problems:
1) Overall people find it enjoyable roleplay to be against any form of government at least a direct Governor is an easy target to be declared dictator. I mean truely, as Governor, what wrong as Stephen Rothman done to the town ? This is why ingame the arguement is simply that Stephen's past is the reason he is bad.

2) The Character of Stephen himself, he is overall a good character. However I do not change my roleplay so that people will like him. He is proud, noble and unafraid to be heavy handed when he can see the outcome is good for the town. This includes forcing Silverbrand to pay the same land tax anyone owning land in Trolls bane must pay; or acting heavy handed to keep the orcs friendly in trolls bane and also convincing them they need the orc lands.

3) Slow to show improvements. Yes now things are happening; but prior to our friendly map team showing interest in changing Trolls Bane things were moving at an agonizingly slow snails pace. I believe this gave some reason for people to think Stephen was useless as governor.

4) Lack of a working Jail. Yes Trolls Bane has the only official trial system, but it is worthless when no prisoner will remain in jail long enough to face their trial. This adds to people saying how worthless the town guard is because no prisoner has been tried yet, tho many have been caught. (This problem is being thought out, perhaps a new profession of prison guard can be implemented if you have help thoughts to solve this problem definately feel free to PM me them.)

5) Definately it is a change for Trolls Bane to go from a lax government under Pendar, (sure he was captain of the guard but did he really change Trolls bane as radically as Stephen did ?). So it is clear that people would not immediately jump at the change.

6) Lastly this is a major problem that I believe is never addressed but needs to be. People use modern day political thinking to play their characters. In this time, any form of voting was rarely done and corrupt public individuals was common. So for people to be argueing about their right to vote for their leader gives the stench of a modern day democractic thinker seeping through their character.

1. very true, what I'm annoyed about, is they like it so much, and they barely have any rp reasons! they kept say "we want him out so he has to go!" a million times on the board. yet Ive only heard a few rumors of any real reason. they can't explain why they hate him

2. no comment

3. thing seems to be happening fairly fast the way I see it. of course extending walls wiill take time, but Pendar (from what I saw) was just like every other citizen except the called him the Governor

4. I like the npc idea...sorta. I don't think it should attack prisoners, because that seems hard to implement, you would have to change it weekly, and they would just run, not fight. but if they're begging for someone to watch the place, why not just buy (an expensive) guard to watch over the place, then they would be forced (this is what they said) to have less jailbrakes.

5.no comment

6. that has never even entered my mind. I don't really study the time period too much, but that does kinda make sense...if it's true.

The own way to solve the problem is to make a very big army of undeads, run over trolls bane, destroy all and finish. Who rebuild it, can rule it, and thats it.

I think that is a very difficult and overall silly approach to it. If we want to get back to square one then do so. Because the person whom would take over Trolls Bane would be Stephen. As he is the person, (currently), with the strongest arms, even many citizens of Trolls Bane that are warriors such as Boremier and Georgius would follow Stephen and help him take back the city. And even after that I am fairly certain that people would continue again to complain about Stephen being leader once more.
Give this some time to settle. I once told Fooser I think, "If Stephen last 3 months he will be permanent ruler." We throw a rock in the middle of a lake by making a Governor and inturn a more direct ruler of Trolls Bane. We are going through the ripples that became of the rock, give the lake some time to settle down.

I'm one of those 99% of players that despises this idea, but its because I'm very satisfied with the current state of things.

A GM character, instituted with the intent of keeping law and order, would simply 'kill' roleplay. Stephen became the governor because the PO Stephen wanted to play him as such, as did all the other characters involved with the government. I'm fairly certain the majority of characters on the opposing end of the spectrum aren't in opposition because the players don't like the idea, but because their characters don't. With a GM at the helm, all of those opportunities would be greatly constricted.

GM intervention also tends to be done from a perspective with a certain amount of OOC influence. That is, the GMs want to choose the best character for the role, and so the person chosen for a role tends to be someone the GMs know well. Take, as an example, the magic academy.

I'm going to be selfish for a moment, but I'm sure this situation applies to other players as well. Never having had a very good relationship with any of the GMs, this tends to exclude my characters from anything I might be interested in being involved in, and it can be a bit frustrating.

Something Korwin said reminded me that I should point out that I personally don't give a rat's ass who rules Trollsbane, since 4 out of my 5 playable characters are elves anyway. It's just, Devrah really has a grudge against Stephen, and she also has her own ideas of the way things should be.

Not to mention the ooc grudges against PO Stephen......or were we not talking about that? Sorry.

ouch


I just want to point out, that from what I'm reading, these ripples are starting to die down. We are giving the people an election, which is exactly what they want.

Who dosent like Sam? Err, ok whatever Marvin.

And Korwin...Please respect that our GM's that spend their free time doing a very difficult and time consuming job for FREE. I ask, How many times you have asked a GM if you could have such a role? I for one would prefer to have a GM ran town.(No offense to Sam, he does a wonderfull job and canot be matched by many in the relm of role playing.) They are wonderfull role players as we all know. You must all realize this is impossible thoe. They simply don't have the time.

Now that I think about it. This topic SHOULD be locked. This is a purely in game matter and we will not have a GM ruler.

hehe, sorry to go off-topic, but sounds funny when you say how many people spend their free time doing stuff for free lol

The real problem with a ruler over TB is in my opinion the time, the motivation and the mankind factor of the PO.
Most former rulerships failed, because players haven't had enough time to go on with the job or lost the motivation to do the job for longer time.

Lyrenzia was one of the well thought out rulership and worked for nearly a year. But only because one of the players behind Lyrenzia spend much time and energy into it and worked with long breath.

Another factor is the jealousy of other players, who wanted also a position with the same power for their chars. But rulership is normally only for few.
And the reason for acting against a rulership is often (not always), that the PO couldn't stand, that another one has reached this position and think, it is unfair in one or another way.
The bickering against all rulerships (and I'm speaking about my experience the last five years in Illarion) was and is always the same and has in my opinion few to do with the roleplay of the chars and much more with the PO behind.

It is the egoism of the player, that his char should be the best, greatest and most beloved or behated, which gives the player satisfaction, while reaching a high position. It is normal mankind, that shines through the gameplay. Candies for me, but not for the others ...

Reading through the RP baord and its bickering and aggressive discussing against one another leads to no other conclusion. The roleplay is only a small coat which covers human egoism barely.

Sorry for stepping on each ones toes.

I thnk people would act the same way in a real life situation. We do not try to gain suck positions as rulers of a contry because we know we cannot and would be impossible. If it was impossible to gain accual status in the scocoity we each live in, we would try our hardest unless we don't care. Like I have said befor we need an absolute ruler to scilence those that oppose them in such a large scale.(Not to mention the lack of fearfull rp is almost non-existent by any one who isent a Halfling.)

Set up a dictatorship in greenbriar.

Garett Gwenour wrote:Set up a dictatorship in greenbriar.

By the way, a quick question.

Would it be possible to attack Greenbriar and eventually take it over?
I'm guessing that GMs will spawn a few like halfing warriors to defend it, but would it be possible?