Racial Organizations

Moirean

I think the idea of race-based RP is super fun, but it is fairly under-developed in Aet right now. However, I think fleshing this out could provide some really nifty cross-org and cross-alignment potential for interaction, another level of politics to play at and more engagement and support, especially to new players looking for interaction and information about roleplay.

RACEWHO - Shows who is online from your race

RACEMEMBERS - Shows a list of all the active members from your race

RACE SELECT <race> - For endgamers, picks which race they align with. This is a PERMANENT decision and can only be changed through a long quest line and/or interaction with gods.

RACEINFO - Shows some basic info about your race

   - Government style

   - Current leadership

   - Racial home/base/outpost (see more info below)

   - Allied factions (tie-in potential with the faction system)

Each race would be somewhat similar to houses in their mechanical structure, with the following basic features offered:

- Chat channel

- Bank account

- Player editable HELP scrolls

- Player editable projects

- Ranks to earn --> These ranks could be done by favoring and/OR (more fun!) earned through the faction system

- Leadership (see more info below)

- Home/base/outpost (see more info below)

- Credits gained through purchases (MAYBE, not vital, but could be a nice way to encourage activity)

Each race would have its own unique style of leadership. Some examples (all totally made up right now and obviously stuff that could be improved) include:

- Imps: Meritocracy-based Impire (highest ranks, determined by either favors or faction points) become governors

- Horkval: Matriarchal hive council reporting to a queen (eg similar to packs, with each leader on the council)

- Kelki: Theocracy, with Slyphe appointing leadership?

- Trolls: Family clan-based thing?

- Grecht: Commune, with regular temporary leadership elections

- Etc

Each race would be given a basic outpost/home. This would be a moderately small building with the same expansion costs of a guildhall/house building (ie no wilderness fees). Expanding this out would be one higher-level goal for those interested in racial leadership to work on. 

- There could be race-based quests inside the racehall.

- Toss a NPC or two into the racehall. Let them teach racial languages.

- Have all NPCs in the racehall only speak the racial tongue to really drive home the race-home point. Also, it could be a good place to visit for those wanting to learn a language through listening!

- Have an NPC or items to interact with to get IG lore about the races - origin stories, fables, etc (you could hold a bardic or two with this as the theme to get players to crowdsource writing these, as well!). Finding out this kind of info in game is just so much more immersive and fun than reading a help file.

Anyways, just some thoughts. I think this could be done with minimal coding investment (mostly just a lot of copy/paste of house code), but it could also offer a fun new level of play and interaction, giving people another aspect of things to RP, more people to interact with, maybe add a bit of politics and intrigue (not all drama and politics is bad!), and could be a fun tie-in when the factions system come out.

Mastema

I love the idea a lot and I do miss being an Imp more and more, so being aligned to them would be great.

Areka

I like the base concept of this, though it brings to mind the questions of: 

- With how many races there are, do we have the population to support this addition of orgs/functionality?

- How would this balance with the existing setup? There's several Trollish hubs, as an example, with varying government/values (Hashan, part of Three Rock, Craneskull, Stormcaller).

- How would this balance with regional culture vs racial culture, especially when they conflict?

- How would this blend with transmutation gem/obtaining rank?

Moirean

I think population wouldn't be a huge issue, since it would be an additional org, akin to houses - and you'd get some unique mixing, with people from all different cities and guilds in there. It'd also open the door to more complex levels of interaction between orgs - maybe Enorian is wary of some of the racial government types, for example, and certain races are treated differently. I played with this idea in Lusternia (a khephera in Glom) and it was really fun - there was a tension there since my org traditionally mistrusted/fought against the race and it added more depth and thought about the org's views and the race itself. So, I think it could enhance and deepen regional culture and add more to the cities beyond just outlooks and ideals (maybe Xorans shun Spinesreach on the whole because brr!), or it could help give a new facet to explore with the ideals of existing orgs.

For races with existing areas, I'd say that'd be the basis for their government type - the existing troll areas, for example, is what made me think of family/clan/tribes. So Trolls, for example, could be split into regional clans, with a leadership council. 

Instead of working around this existing stuff, I think an overarching racial organization could enhance them, especially once the faction stuff goes in. The race itself could be like an umbrella faction, with sub-factions under it, which would also help allow for easier organization of individual factions - instead of just slapping in another faction if we got a new Troll area, for example, it'd be slotted in under the overarching Troll faction, which would help keep things tidy and not too overwhelming (I really have no idea how factions are going to work, but I'm imagining something similar to WoW with rep gains). It'd also create a tidy way to handle rival factions (eg you can only support one Troll tribe) or easily open the door to overall faction reputation based on cumulative sub-faction rep. This is all just speculation, based on how I am guessing factions might work.

I didn't consider the transmutation gem, but off the top of my head, you could do something like put people in the race they start the game as by default. When you racechange with a transmutation gem you get a message prompting you to RACE SELECT similar to what Tekals/Azudim/etc would get. Have a stat line showing what race you are allied with and if the person has the artifact power of the gem/are endgame show a line about selecting a race to align with. RP-wise, this could also open the door to some fun stuff between race loyalists and those who change their form or whatever.

Sessizlik

You just want to officially be the Queen o' Imps, @Moirean. Admit it!

 

Do love the idea though. Some races don't have many Active characters and I do miss racial rp at times. Besides, everyone Always uses aetolian (or to some extent, albedi), but you almost never see a bunch of Grecht hanging out, talking their native language just for the fun of it.

 

And just Think of the conflicts that could arise! For examples, the Rajamalans and the Xorani starts hating on eachother and a minor war breaks out between the races. The Rajas hire the Trolls to get more muscle, to which the Xorani answer by allying themselves with the Humans and Dwarves. And so on and so forth! Omg, would be so much fun!

Missari

I always found it hilarious when someone RP'd being racist.More people should do that.

Xavin

The irony at people using Albedi as their primary language is that there is no way in hell someone from Sapience would have spent enough time over there to actually have that as a primary tongue.

Toz

I dunno how you learn languages, man. But when I learn a language, I just get my language token out of my pack and hold it in the air until it disappears and my brain is injected with a full, perfect knowledge and understanding of the language in an instant.

Angwe

As much as the snowflakey 'I'm going to speak Albedi ALL THE TIME because it makes me special!' thing annoys me, I think it'd be going a bit too far to say there's no way a Sapient couldn't have been over there long enough to make it a familiar or even primary tongue. After all, illegal immigration is nothing new.

Toz

Albedo is cruose-control for cool. Luna taught me that!

Toz

cruise *

Xavin

Angwe said:

As much as the snowflakey 'I'm going to speak Albedi ALL THE TIME because it makes me special!' thing annoys me, I think it'd be going a bit too far to say there's no way a Sapient couldn't have been over there long enough to make it a familiar or even primary tongue. After all, illegal immigration is nothing new.

Pretty sure an admin has openly stated that, in general, people from Sapience do not get to spend enough time over there for that sort of thing to happen. You can't, for example, make a character that grew up on Albedos because they just don't allow that kind of stuff from Sapience's races.

Eleanor

People assuming that they can live there and be at least nominally accepted and making up stories of living over there and stuff are making a lot of assumptions about a lot of lore that we haven't exactly been handed yet. Also it should be kept in mind that the only place accessible is Delve, which is a small place where it is entirely conceivable that they could find and remove every illegal immigrant.

Toz

I made up crap for Grecht because there was literally nothing except a helpfile I found, that some admin didn't even know about. Some more documentation would be awesome, and I think this idea would help with that. It'll save me having to retcon stuff next time!

Irruel

I'd like to say, 'Great idea, good thinking, please can we have this?'
It would very much depend on the implementation, though.

In all my time playing IRE muds, I've seen quite a lot of great racially related rp, and almost none of it has come from the race clans which have been created by players to bring the races together (the single, short-lived exception being the lycan clan for about an 8 week period, in Imperian, but that was mostly due to a single player's vision, which turned stale quite quickly).

I'm all for it if it comes with real, coded and event driven reasons for races to want to return, regularly and often, to their racial home(s), and to put aside their guild, city, theological and ethical differences, at times, to mingle and maybe even work with, others of their race even though they might be enemies at other times. I'm always all for muddying the waters when it comes to the old, tired conflicts.

Ultimately most players, pvpers or just rpers, want new, interesting and evolving conflict. Because a pvper that hates rping, still gets bored of fighting the same handful of people every day, and an rp-only-er gets bored of the same rp. For the majority who sit somewhere in the middle, variety is even more important.

But if all it is is a bunch of glorified racial clans, then meh. Please spend the precious coding resources elsewhere and leave this for a day when it can be implemented properly.

Moirean

Well, I deliberately modeled this off of the house system, which means it would take minimal coding resources - just a reskin of that and some work with the leadership styles - with the bulk of the work on the writers/creative types and the players themselves. Trust me, some of us rather like organizing stuff and expanding guildhalls; we would eat it up.

I'd say that a large part of the reason the race clans often have little success is because they are just clans. They aren't formalized. They can't do anything. A broader system with actual physical locations, mobs to interact with, lore, stuff to explore and learn, and potential for larger scale interaction is going to more successful out the gate simply because it's official and supported by the admin through its very creation.

It also creates a base for later tie-ins with developing mechanics, such as the upcoming faction system, or a conflict mechanic could be implemented with the races at some point down the road (eg some sort of quest/reputation based system to gain territorial favor/control). The specifics would be for the admin to flesh out, but the generalities proposed are mostly just a system to encourage extra forms of interaction, politics and player-driven events/conflict.