MetaTerminal

“There’s technically no limit, but I don’t think I’ve seen a guild started by a new member ever really get off the ground. If you’re planning to make one, I suggest airing your ideas with others so we can improve it, or propose alternative guilds that already cover your ideas.”

If it was done with the cooperation of the two people (even assassinations should probably get permission from the person from the outset of the attack), then intra-guild-warfare could become a cool thing. It already sorta happened with the Ghostbloods, although that may have been a ploy. Still not sure. Mraize has refused to explain. In terms of the leaders having different goals: if the guild goal is agreed democratically at the start of the era, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. It really depends on the specifics.

Is the holiday season usually this busy for most? I know it’ll get busy for me in the future, so I will do my best to stay active on here (especially if we see a similar level of activity as in LG50), but consider yourself forewarned that I may miss a cycle or two. Sorry in advance. This is NAI, especially since I can see you using this as a bluff as an elim: your style of play is very helpful (or “helpful”) regardless of your faction. We can’t really draw any conclusions from this. That being said, I would encourage you to continue to share information that you can without causing damage. Mafia is a game of information and information like this that people might not think to share is the kind of stuff we need. I agree with Snip’s conclusions of Devotary being a kill for activity - PMs are closed, so there couldn’t have been any private transfer of information that triggered the kill. I’m not sure what to think about this - the only reason I could think of for a village warrior not to claim and vouch is they didn’t want to give away that they were Hardy, and thus deter an elim kill. That’s not a good reason not to vouch, and I would encourage someone to do so. However, even if someone did cover Snip’s claim, FalDara is an NAI role. If he isn’t FalDara, that’s also NAI - Rand would have good cause to lie about his role. Lynching all liars isn’t necessarily a good idea in this instance, and it’s just as likely that Rand would have gotten pegged in the first round as Aginor. The redirect indicates to me that either both Fura and Snip are village, or one of them is elim (Snip with the self-redirect to search for roles, and Fura to get Snip killed out of suspicion). I’d find it unlikely that they’re both elim, as a bus this early in the game would do much more harm than good and doesn’t seem like something I’d expect Fura to do. I therefore wouldn’t be opposed to flipping Snip to learn more about Fura.

May I present to you a helpful wiki page, summarised for your convenience: https://alleyverse.wikia.com/wiki/Seven_Day_War

I have an idea to do that through WoD, although that needs a little more work before I’d be willing to air that idea (although I’d probably get to it a little more quickly if people wanted to go down that route). I haven’t kept up with Solace’s shenanigans, however, so those might be a better era-ending candidate. (Another reason to encourage guilds to come up with goals - it means we aren’t ever lacking in ‘main plot’, as there’ll always be something going on.)

Easy. It started in April, then there was May, then June... Don’t forget the moustache! Now I want to work out a date system and timeline.

I like this thread already. Mraize Meeker’s description alone. So I had a description of myself, but Guacless’s is so much more flattering, so yeah let’s go with that. Ninja’d. (It all began on the 28th of June 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Serbian nationalist group Black Hand...) @Ookla the Gambler is the one with martial arts training and could probably deck everyone in the room without breaking a sweat, but seems super zen most of the time and doesn’t kill you when you get into arguments with them out of the kindness of their hearts. (Or that’s what Devaan’s like, anyway.)

The problem with the idea that you should just "join as many guilds as you want" is that I think we're trying to move towards making guilds a more important facet of character and the world; yes, if you're super active in four guilds, working towards all of their goals and want to join another one, then that should be allowed. But I sincerely doubt that even half of the guilds most people are in are doing anything significant. I mean, when was the last time you (or anyone - sorry, Mac) made a contribution to the Craftsmen? (October. It was October.) Or, to state it another way: name every guild you're in that you contribute to. Like, really contribute to. That you would be willing to kill characters over to defend. If it's more than five, I'm going to eat a bar of chocolate. The idea of limiting guilds is to make each join a cost-benefit analysis. Do I really want to join this guild and support it long-term? Or am I just joining because it looks cool, and will drop out later? (Ahem.) So, yes, it's not a hard rule, but you'll have to apply for exceptions. And new guild ideas have to be really good to take off. Limiting this number will both increase activity in existing guilds, forge stronger relations between characters and their guilds, and basically improve the RP overall. I like the idea of RP in PMs, but I don't know if that will make much of a significant difference, and will likely hinder planning, as guilds will want to outline plot ideas and threads and that might be difficult if you're limited to just in-character. I suppose it's down to individual guilds to make those decisions, but I would encourage it if they thought that it was a good idea. As for the Lifeless army; I don't mind them existing as long as they're not used in a way that is OP. This should probably go in the power reform thread, but if you want to foreshadow a buildup of forces, a few hints really won't do. Like, the buildup of forces for the invasion of Normandy took insane amount of planning to keep secret. Most characters here don't have the ability for that sort of subterfuge. So if an army is going to be used, we should probably know explicitly, in advance, with several mentions in the chat thread/pm as well so we can all OK that it's not too OP. Maybe that's overdoing it, but an army is a lot of power. The logistics alone should definitely be noticed by others. Yes, insane multi-faction wars are fun, but that's mostly because of the narrative and the hijinks, and not the power-arms-race.

“It depends what you’d call recent events, Kaladin, but the wiki details everything in Era 1.”

How many guilds are you in?

No reason; I missed it. I also didn't read through signups if Bard claimed there. That is a reasonable explanation for their post; although I'd like to hear more from both. And in absence of any particular non-random suspicious candidates (I don't find any problems with Doctor's reads at this stage), I won't be changing my vote, unless anyone has objections to that. Given that I may be busy with other projects in the future, I may join Radiant in sticking to largely player analysis, unless there is a dearth of rule-based extrapolation. Comments by Karnatheon and Fura have made me think that won't be a problem. You're not alone.

Here’s an idea: there are two ‘versions’ of guilds. One is the ones that the Avatars are in - these are the OOC PMs and threads, and the way we count ‘official guilds’. An avatar can be in up to three official guilds (four at a stretch). The characters that are linked to avatars can be in the guilds that their avatars are in; if a character wants to join a guild, that avatar has to join as well. But, a character does not have to be in every guild that the avatar is in; an avatar can be a member of the Sentinels and still have characters that aren’t. In that way, avatars could also be considered ‘leaders’ of their guilds, without having their characters need to be in charge. Of course, that would require someone to track avatar’s affiliations outside of their characters. That wouldn’t necessarily take a lot of work, though; just designate someone Official Spreadsheet Coordinator and have everyone announce/fill it in. That does mean opportunities to have secret members would be limited, but I’d think that the amount of story mileage to be gained there is questionable. What this means is that avatars can create plans for the future of the guilds without restricting their characters to a leadership role. An avatar can be the leader of a guild (and perhaps control the character that is the in-RP leader) but still have lower-ranking characters. Laurelai is an excellent example.

So I reread the rules, and my head hurts already. We’ve barely even started. Is that a good sign or a bad sign? Perhaps both. I agree with Steel in that no one has really done much that is strongly alignment indicative, but I’d encourage them to vote regardless, even if it is based on something as silly as a profile picture. We need information at this stage of the game. I’ve got a slight elim read on Bard as their only post isn’t even 20 words long and doesn’t provide much in the way of actual statement or analysis, and seems to be just RP. They’re checking in without offering substance, even more so than simply voting or saying that they don’t know what’s going on. Bard. MetaTerminal

I agree, artificially limiting people to one guild won’t be much of a benefit to anyone. If there was going to be a limit, I’d put it at three/four or so. That’s enough to be in a major guild and still support smaller ones/allow for infiltration and RP opportunities.

If you’re affiliated with multiple guilds, I’d think you’d just list all of your affiliations.

Only a third? Wow. I wouldn’t suppose many of the remainder would be taken up by smaller guilds . In that case, I think we should encourage non-affiliated people to join ‘official’ guilds. Even just having people declare themselves ‘independent’ would help, as they’d have to make an active decision to opt-out (at least temporarily) of a guild or guilds.

I think, from now on, any guild ideas should be discussed before they are made. (That overlaps with planning a little bit, though.) Even something like a hard limit on new guilds (unless they’re a new and interesting idea that everyone likes) would get more people into older guilds and increase activity in them. But I understand if that idea won’t fly. I agree with the ‘no more armies’ rule. Having people hire armies from PCs gives more opportunities for RP and decreases power level (in addition to the fact that they’re not just disposable troops any more). There should also be a codified list of guilds that are considered official, probably in the Alleyverse Guide section. Limitations on this should be 1) that they’re active 2) have 4+ members. Activity means that the guild (not just its constituent members) is making plans and RPing. What do I mean by making plans? I think guild activity in general could be worked on. I aired the idea earlier of each guild having to come up with a goal for the end of the era, ideally one that brings them into conflict/RP with other guilds. Or someone could introduce a thing that could increase conflict (like a macguffin of great power that every guild wants and are willing to fight to get). A guild tries to ally with another guild that they previously have been enemies with, or vice-versa. Or they try to steal an item that the other guild has. Or they try to kill a specific member (with that member’s approval, of course). Or they try to take over another guild, as how the Ghostbloods were recently ‘acquired’. Or they simply try to ally with a guild they’ve previously been enemies with. Maybe the last idea was simply a ploy to put them in the perfect position to stab their enemy in the back. There’s plenty of ideas to be had. All I’m saying is that the Alleyverse started from guild conflict. Unfortunately, guilds (especially TUBA, at least publically) have been minor players recently. I’d love to see the guilds begin to take centre stage again. EDIT: How guild membership is handled also needs to be looked at. I think people (accounts) should be members of at most 2 guilds, and those affiliations should be displayed with their character sheets or perhaps a new section. That way, people more strongly identify with guilds, and one’s affiliations can easily be determined.

The summaries are an excellent idea. Now that we’ve gotten some discussion around Archer’s other suggestions, I think we should codify them and make decisions about what we should implement and when. Rules around guilds will need the most work, I think, but if we can get them right it will be worth it.

I haven’t finished the WoT series, but this looks like fun. Signing up as Elak Dehlin, a superstitious merchant fearful of magic. MetaTerminal

Voidus will (and should) be released at some point. How that happens is up for debate. Alum has somewhat of an attachment to WoD at this point (unless the barrier decides to let him go free) and now that IRL has substantially cleared up I can try to help it to start again. Even if it works as a sort of subplot. (A subplot about freeing the most powerful being in the RP, yes, but a subplot nonetheless.) The problem with WoD as a main plot, though, is that it might be difficult for people to get involved if they don’t have a reason to pick a side. I could brainstorm some ideas to make it more significant - perhaps Alum could go rogue and try to free just Voidus (just retcon my time in absentia as time when Alum was studying the barrier), which the Liebrarians could fight against and other guilds could therefore get involved. But, again, I think it would work well alongside a second main plot. What was the ultimate decision regarding the Precursors? One has to be made.

Now I have the song stuck in my head. Excellent. All ideals are fictional, at first. It is whether or not we put stock in them that brings them to reality. If that sort of idea interests you, I’d reccomend looking up the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. It takes the concept and builds on it, showing a solution to the original problem.

Don’t forget: journey before destination.

After following your excellent advice, I’d like to introduce you to Jim (no last name), a 3rd Ideal Dustbringer and steel/pewter twinborn. He has dead parents and feels sad about it. Also he has access to every Investiture and likes to be the centre of attention.

I feel like doing another time jump would be odd. The start of era 2 was a little bit awkward, with none of the characters knowing each other. Besides, if we’re going to implement a lot of new rules and ideas, needing most people to create new characters would also cause problems (unless we wanted the scale down in power associated with that). I would much rather that those who wanted new characters make them, and those who want to keep old characters would keep them, while we worked out what changes we wanted to make.

As someone who knows much about either Halo or Warhammer, I think that having both would start to stretch the RP a little too much. We already have all of the Cosmere (barring Skyward, as of now), most of what isn’t, some Lovecraft and Warhammer. There’s plenty of room to explore in there that hasn’t been tapped. I think that adding more stuff to the sandbox will just start to power creep. And power growth on its own is not necessarily a bad thing, but there’s a difference in my mind between getting more skilled at what you are already good at and simply getting new powers. I understand the urge to add stuff you love to something else you love, it would set a precedent I’m not entirely happy with. It says that anyone can add lore from outside what we already have. Instead of developing the systems and powers we know, we reach outwards and add new stuff. It’s also an issue if you don’t know about the source material. See, I don’t play either game. The Warhammer thing was a bit of a reach to begin with, but since it’s so ingrained in the origins of the Alleyverse I’ve gotten quite used to it now, and I’ve picked up enough about it to understand the gist. But it would be hard for me to RP against someone with a character that had weapons, armour, traits and characteristics that were completely foreign to me. It would be a steep learning curve to add things that we probably don’t need. If people don’t learn it, then what you get is a scenario where a few specific people have the ability to make their character very OP through knowledge of Halo, without others being also able to access that. Which will happen - you can’t say that having laser guns, grenades, vehicles and spaceships won’t increase your power levels. I’m not against adding to the Cosmere’s source material, but when we start to include things that aren’t universal across all participants, we run into problems. People come to the RP to play with Cosmere material - adding too much stuff that isn’t widely known devoid from that universe will cause problems. TL;DR I agree with Lurker and Sorana.