Suggestions from the Shadowboard

very on point, and what struck me strongest were the first ten pts in staff activity. dont find myself disagreeing with much anything in that whole msg. nice job

I think if the storytelling were handled in a better way people would be more willing to overlook code deficiencies. This is one of the reasons people won't bag on sanvean as much as other producers. Shit was going on story wise. Have it so every level of staff has to do at least one plot a month. I know they'll say they don't want monster of the week, but come on that's what people want. Make things happen in those corners of the world that people don't go. Have surprises for people that have the map.

Aides don't get paid all that much from my experience in playing them, they get paid as much as any regular worker in the house. Might be different depending on who they aide for but from experience..don't make all that much.

i'd imagne they aren't looking for most of what I said. But it needs to be out there. so people know what they should be doing but arent.

A lot of the shit that was going on when san was stll in the game was player-driven. It happened because the staff stayed mostly out of the way of a few very ambitious leader PCs.

it would really be nice if they got ths.

i guess "much" is subjective. In that case, end automatic pay for aides. Everything they get comes from their noble out of pocket. really, I just think it would lead to more competition and clan mmbers getting jealous of each other if most (or all) of their cash/fancy clothes/etc was coming directly from the noble.

Wth few exceptions, theyve never been important. They mostly keep staff from having to animate noble NPCs to remind people they exist. just about anything they do is done through the staff. This is because of staff decisions requirng nobles to seek out staff decisions to possbly exercise their "power" via the staff. it's a circle of nonsense the staff inflictd on themselves. If they didn't put players in a role where they are required to find ways to use staff that require staff approval, staff work, and inter-staff coordination, they wouldnt be forced to make work for a staff increasngly tred of all the work theyre making players make for them.

nononononono! Let me be clear. I am NOT advocating removing noble roles in this post.

My recommendation is: all nobles are now viewed as largely unimportant to their houses. Theyre already kept at low ranks so the staff don't constantly have to tell players, "Yeah, I know you're technically in charge of planning a war but you cant plan a war." fuck that noise. i want nobles to be played as the privileged highborn bastards theyre already forced to play as if they want to have any activity. Or activity that doesnt require your 27B/6 approved of in triplicate and scheduled as an RPT in 2 months when all of the other clan imms can have stuff in place.

maybe a compar and contrast would help...

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Lady Current of House Now and her rival, Lord Effmi of House Lech have a long-running rivalry. Both are mid-level nobles. (or being virtually groomed for it and given tasks by the mid-level). it mostly consists of spreadng rumors about each other. Current and Effmi cant assassinate each other because every time they put in a request with their staffrs, thos staff then check with other staff for what kind of world response it'd invoke. Or if it would be possible given the virtual scurity involved. Or if it can be workd into an upcoming rpt. And then theres the clan actvity-hit that would come of a leadr getting killed. And isnt it important to make sure everyone has gameplay in the socialist People's Republc of Armageddon?

And the result is those requests are on semi-permannt hold if they arent outright shot down. And so are any requests requiring building objects, changing room descs, or pretty much anything other than throwing parties, because those forms of competiton all requir staff to do something. Similarly, both Current and Effmi have their activities constantly undrmined by the staff who dont want to do the work of coming up with an "appropriate world response" to their behavior.

Other players are constantly exposd to how unimportant these "important" charactrs who can't get anything done are.

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Lord Whocares is a noble of House Doesn't Matter. He will be unimportant to his house for the entirety of his characters life no matter how much he accomplishes. Or doesnt. He has a rivalry with Lady Dammit of... you know what? His own house. Why not? Whocares is a pomp who has thugs for aides that beat up stragers that fail to amuse him when he gets bored. Dammit fels he's bringing the house down so she hires aides to murder his aides. Each has fiercely loyal aides, who owe their ability to be blatant criminals to their well-paying masters, and it's not uncommon to see them get into vicious fights in public while shouting the superiority of their Lord/Lady.

This has absolutely zero world response. while Dammit is proving you can be doomed to unimportance and behave like a proper Doesnt Matter should, and while Whocares is acting like a sadistic spoiled dandy, neither means a krath-damnd thing to the world. When they get murdred someone will look into it. But there won't be some bullshit VNPC army of mindbenders and spies dedicated to avengng some expendabl dandy whose death just made all the surviving members of his/her house slghtly richer.

Unlike the previous scenario, players see a pair of deranged inbred highborn raining shit on everything around them while getting away with it. These non-noble players wll switch from tiredly viewing nobles as toothlss pcs who offer inactivity with monthly pay to genuinely being scared shitless every time they meet one. And possibly finding a job so they can be on the giving end of injustice.

Because whil you dont know that the noble you're meeting is crazy, you do know they can pretty much get away with anything they do to you unless you have good connections. And that is kind of terrifying. Whch is supposed to be how lowborn feel when they run into highborn.

No more MMO style trap rooms? Where's special class A or we all burn! Load 10k NPCs!

BitterFB hits a bunch of nails on the head, especially the catch 22 of noble "rp" where players are contantly told how theyre nothing and unimportant yet the staff still micromanage everything. which is it, are nobles powerless nobodies or are they so powerful that they need to be micromanaged. dont forget other mixed ass signals like npc nobles that should be equial to noble pcs but that seem to wield assloads of power and everyone grovels to. Or then there's the situation where staff will turn around and tell noble pcs they must must must do something thats way out of there league. I've played aides, nobles, and templars in both cities over the years so Id bet 100 bucks that with the recent senate shenanigans in nak that the noble pcs were told "YOU MUST MAKE SURE THAT BORSAILS MOVE SUCCEEDS/FAILS IN THE SENATE" which is hilarious becuase how the hell are bottom rung noble nobody pcs supposed to influence the senate realistically? it's insulting really. the real icing on the cake is that the borsails move would happen regardless of whether the noble pc lifts a finger because it was preordained by the staff. And the cherry on top of the icing was the board post about how some Black Robes were at the senate meeting. Red robes are so game breakingly powerful that theyre orders of magnitude more powerful than anything players can achieve, so its absurd to throw BLACK ROBES into the mix. course if i were running the game and I wanted to involve some noble pcs in the senate proceedings then I'd animate a senior noble to put the lowly pc noble to use as an aide or scribe or something in a way that actually makes sense for a humble meaningless shitstain noble to be involevd. in my years Ive never seen anything like that for triumvirate/senate "rp" though.

Anyone who wants to throw out their pearls of wsdom is welcome to drop 'em here. Just rmember to keep them on the topic of "reducing staff workload" and "increasng activity"