Announce post #3282: War: Some Clarity

Autoposter

12/17/2021 at 15:12
Ictinus, the Architect
Everyone
War: Some Clarity

Hi folks,

As I've been asked about this numerous times in the last few days (with each answer seemingly suffering from a game of telephone in the process), I'm writing to clarify the following:

- We won't be adding new mechanics to the war system or introducing hard mechanical objectives to declare a winner or loser while a war is ongoing.

- It's up to those involved to come to a resolution, either through negotiation, surrender, mutual ceasefire, or some other sort of terms.

- In the event that both parties come to an agreement to end the war that requires some minimal admin support to enforce or implement (think within the scope of an orgreq at most), we are willing to help with that in the post-war cleanup.

- Any agreements involving Gods will need their explicit in character assent.

I'm writing this purely for clarity's sake; it's entirely up to those of you who are involved to decide how you want to play it out.


Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 14th of Lleian, in the year 499 MA.

Naos

An absolute amazing stance, without a doubt. This does two things that I hope get realized:

1) There's no chance at bias claim here. What happens is completely at the hands of the players.

2) This is a really, really good reminder that everyone involved in this war are players in a game that ultimately amounts to someone writing a story. In all honesty, the leaders of either side should really consider getting together in an OOC fashion to consider a roleplayed resolution that will benefit not only the game, but everyone under them that've been fighting in it. It's a story that's affecting dozens of people, and whether they like it or not, organization leaders have a responsibility to those people. If you aren't taking up positions of power in the game because you think you can help enrich the gameplay of those around you, whether through the story, or support, you're jumping into those positions for the wrong reasons.

Xenia

Naos said:

2) This is a really, really good reminder that everyone involved in this war are players in a game that ultimately amounts to someone writing a story. In all honesty, the leaders of either side should really consider getting together in an OOC fashion to consider a roleplayed resolution that will benefit not only the game, but everyone under them that've been fighting in it. It's a story that's affecting dozens of people, and whether they like it or not, organization leaders have a responsibility to those people. If you aren't taking up positions of power in the game because you think you can help enrich the gameplay of those around you, whether through the story, or support, you're jumping into those positions for the wrong reasons.

I want to highlight this point and speak a bit on this as well: from initiating these kinds of things to ending them, when it's player generated its important to have an actual plan and story direction in mind that is generous to everyone. When we're doing things like this we're taking on the role of Dungeon Master with one another and every good Dungeon Master is going to push and make their players struggle while ultimately plan for the party's success. What this means for us as players is we should already have story rewards in mind for the people we're engaging in the conflict large or small. For example with the Seluno battle in the Ilhavon, I knew before initiating everything what kind of story rewards I wantd to give the Templars and Sentinel: Templars would be given an opportunity to rescue/saved villagers, Sentinels would be given a platform to push some unknown goal/message/agenda. In knowing that these were things I wanted to provide those opponents in the conflict I was able to shape a lot of what my own organization was doing to enable those opportunities in an organic way. To be clear I didn't know how or if I'd be able to make those things happen, but I knew it was important to keep my eyes open and always look for opportunities to reward Sentinels and Templars story wise.

Conflict is fun - but it's important to remember part of what makes conflict fun is its a catalyst for telling a meaningful story. One thing I would say about how this war was initiated was it fell into the trap of framing its conclusion into a win/lose situation with heavy expectations to win for both sides -- from personal experience (I've made this pitfall so many times in trying to instigate conflict as my way of engaging the player base at large) this never goes well because I see that it traps the players into story expectations that we can't control and will always require the input and intervention of god characters. To be clear I'm not saying we shouldn't involve the gods in the stories we create and instead remember if we cause conflict over things gods have implemented, we're pigeon holing ourselves and won't be in a situation where we can easily collaborate with all the players involved (i.e. Celani). If this is something you want to do, I would recommend going into it with the purpose of telling a story about you and your organization's failure because it's impossible to know how those story elements you want to fight about are intended in the larger, admin created, Aetolian story.