Thomas Hobbes
First Post
Serpenteye said:You are free to concieve of a more convincing rationale, but my ruling stands as a firm solid No.))
No, I think I'll leave you alone on this one.
I might argue the finer details of your in-game rational, but your out-of-game one is entirely reasonable, and about what I expected- no, magical research isn't transferable, and yes, you could spend your own PPs on other people for industry and tech, but there's no direct gain. I would ask about the second point- could I, for example, negotiate with an Infiltrator faction to infiltrate territory X and pass on the info for me; in exchange, I'll pay for the insertion cost, or such-and-such many regular PL's. If I get this right, since regular PL that aren't converted to armies can represent any number of things, including money, this is a reasonable system.One thing I did want to add, and didn't have time for, was that I think it would be cool (and, perhaps more to the point, balanced) to allow people to cast high-level spells over multiple factions if they both have the capability. For example, both Celene and the Mare Mysticum (a purely hypthoetical alliance, I assure you) have access to 10th-level spells and X and Y number of Epic PLs. Alone, they could cast a certain number of 10th-level spells per turn; together, their mages wreak untold devastation!
Very often in fiction, paticularly in the history of a world (random thought: after we wrap this up, run an RPG game set in post-IR greyhawk, if there is one), there's a line about "The mages of Elves and priests of men combined their power to..." etc., etc. and it would be great if we could throw that sort of thing in here.
To return to something you said earlier, perhaps small mage-centric factions like the Circle of Eight should have a Researcher trait, to go along with the small rogue-centric Infiltrators, allowing them to get more bang for their epic PL buck. This would allow them to compete with their larger neighbors in a way similar to the way Infiltrator does. This may or may not be required, depending on how you "stat out" the territories and forces they control.
Some thinking aloud: Your output is Industry and the number of PPs you generate, basically. So what is trade with other countries? The scale actually seems large enough for business to matter a little (hey, each turn is a quarter!), but on the other hand, not matter that much. Probably best to keep it abstract. Although it occurs to me that one way to represent trade is to voluntarily trade some control of a territory. So the Kevelond League gets 1 point of a territory of the Baklunish league and Baklun gets 1 point of a territory. There's no real benefit to either side, but it makes the co-dependent and might be a good sign of trust, a gesture of goodwill, a strengthening of bonds, etc., etc. It may or may not be worth doing in any case. Any other thoughts on the matter?
Edena- Thanks for the historical and first-hand view of trying to run this thing. I like to think I would have been careful and polite before, but I must admit I never actually thought real hard about the out of game logisitics of the IR. Thanks again to Serpenteye, doghead, William Ronald, Edena, and everyone else who takes some time to pitch in.
As an aside, I'm assuming anyone who made their e-mails available to be contacted about the IR doesn't object to having them up; as I eventually figured out from others on this board, the logic runs that there are programs scanning messageboards and other likely places for e-mail addresses and adding them to spam lists, and they can be fooled by changing the usual [username]@[domain].com format. So by all means, feel free to post the e-mail addresses in this list I compiled, but on this messageboard I've picked up the habit of [dot]ing my .s and [at]ing my @s.
Edit:
Something to add about e-mails, other messageboards, and assorted private communication: these boards, with the spoiler (which creates blacked-out text) and sblock tags (which creates a hideable/revealble section like I've been using for the e-mail list to save scrolling) can also be used. So if I wanted to send a secret message to Iuz, I could do this:
With no offense intended to the Vecna wannabe in question.
The disadvantage of this is that, while no one can see what I've written to Iuz (assuming we're all good boys and girls and don't peek), they can see that I have communicated with Iuz. I also consider having stuff on the boards a virtue, so historians without access to individual e-mail accounts can reconstruct things post-apocalypse.
I should ask, Serpenteye, 'cause I've been wondering: do you want to see our inter-player communication? You have to read it, which is more work, but it might save you from being blindsided. The main reason I mention it, really, is that spying on someone generally include knowing whom they diplomacize with; I think it would be cool if Infiltrators got forwarded the occasional e-mail.
I had assumed you would want to, and my plan was to e-mail the player in question and then post the correspondence under [sblock] tags with a "GM's eyes only" note. It ends up on the board, and the GM knows what I said, but no one but he and the recipient knows who the recipient is.This might be a good way to do all GM-player secret communication, since it means Serpenteye doesn't get deluged with e-mails.
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