Poll Thread Re: SDNW4/4.5/5

[White Haven]

Hmmh. The clusters idea seems like an exercise in complexity for complexity's sake. At the same time, I do have to disagree with Siege's 'no rules' general position. SDNW4 did things fairly well, all told, as far as the very limited ruleset. A few of the special-case scenarios (troop ships, I'm looking at YOU) got a bit wonky, but by and large it worked. As such, my general position would be that changes should be kept to a minimum unless really needed. I'm not against edits or tweaks, mind you, just generally against the idea of tearing things apart as Step One.

I'm somewhat torn, I do like Red and Blue, but at the same time my mind keeps drifting back to the frothing, bubbly insanity of the League of Thought and all the disfunctionality that never really got told in their first incarnation.

[Panzersharkcat]

How well would a state practicing armed neutrality fit in when power blocs form? I think that's how I want to play the Bastian Star Empire. I'm not entirely certain as that may crimp story potential unless it becomes a massive refugee center or a negotiating ground.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmmh. The clusters idea seems like an exercise in complexity for complexity's sake. At the same time, I do have to disagree with Siege's 'no rules' general position. SDNW4 did things fairly well, all told, as far as the very limited ruleset. A few of the special-case scenarios (troop ships, I'm looking at YOU) got a bit wonky, but by and large it worked. As such, my general position would be that changes should be kept to a minimum unless really needed. I'm not against edits or tweaks, mind you, just generally against the idea of tearing things apart as Step One.

Well, as I understood Siege's position, he didn't want to change the rules drastically. For myself I might tweak a few things a bit, but here is where I agree with Siege: the rules aren't really that important. What's going to determine whether the game lasts 1 month, 3 months, 6, 12, 15, or 24 is going to be how we handle player behavior, the moderator ethos, and how effective we are at playing off each other rather than quietly playing by ourselves in massive parallel.

I'm somewhat torn, I do like Red and Blue, but at the same time my mind keeps drifting back to the frothing, bubbly insanity of the League of Thought and all the disfunctionality that never really got told in their first incarnation.

The League of Thought would be, within reason, OK in this edition as far as I'm concerned. It's got extremely powerful psychics, but their powers rely on blowing shit up. That's less insidious and problematic than things like interstellar-range mind control or prescience, because we accept numerous ways of letting people blow shit up by technological means.

If you get too much argument from other players when you seriously float the concept, I do ask that you try something else. But I will not be the point of origin for the arguments- it strikes me as a test case for how weird we're willing to be.

How well would a state practicing armed neutrality fit in when power blocs form? I think that's how I want to play the Bastian Star Empire. I'm not entirely certain as that may crimp story potential unless it becomes a massive refugee center or a negotiating ground.

Remember, we don't actually anticipate the whole galaxy turning into a war zone or anything. Neutrality just means you aren't taking sides in other people's wars, it doesn't mean you don't have interests or goals of your own, or that people in your country don't have them- and remember that most good stuff in these games comes from the behavior of individuals, not nations acting on vast impersonal scales.

[White Haven]

It's like the old argument about Superman blowing Lois Lane in half mid-coitus. Leaguers don't do subtle very well, and their fine control is...dubious at best.

[Simon_Jester]

Just make sure they can interact meaningfully with other people.

[White Haven]

Oh, that's not a problem. They're not terribly calm or stable, but the lack of subtlety and fine control is in reference to psykery, not personas. With any luck, I won't get involved in a naval engagement in the pre-game diplomacy thread this time. That...well...

[Darkevilme]

I Think I remember that after the game the League of Thought was featured in an STGOD there's was a somewhat understandable rule in the next game that you needed some form of technological augmentation in order to cause mass destruction with psionics. The reason simply being that otherwise each League Psycher or equivalent is a nuclear weapon you could easily sneak into places seen as all they need is their grey matter rather than say, a much more easily detected suitcase nuke.

This is easily if cheesily rectified without requiring they use amplifier chairs though. Maybe they can't damp their powers down enough to hide from ESP scanners. But I think it bears at least noticing prior things that may have come from the League's existence (It also led to Chamarran's building giant mind control emitter towers in the game that followed the League, but that's another story).

[Simon_Jester]

OK, we can hash this out in the next thread. It's about single countries and details of the psychic rules, which have been a multi-year pain in the butt anyway.

What I'm trying to concentrate on in this thread (at least for now) is the grandest-level stuff. It's not so much about the setup of the game itself and individual countries going "nuh-uh, I want this!." It's about what attitudes and principles we should be keeping in mind as we go into setup.

I really hadn't intended to start a serious rules discussion or map creation thread until April- I've just got too damn much crap to take care of, although I may be able to get more done over spring break next week.

Hmm. Maybe I should talk to Steve and get him to split out the stuff from Page 3 and on into a "SDNW5 Something Or Other Thread."

[White Haven]

The original solution in their origin setting was simply that League psykers stood out like a magnesium flare in a cave to any sort of modern sensor system, given the absurd amount of energy they can fling around. That produced quite an amusing scene, actually, when a delegation of League combat psykers passed through a scanner system on the way to a UN summit.

[Simon_Jester]

Okay. Again, I want some real discussion about whether or not the League is kosher for this game, but I don't want to have it now because it's a detail thing, and because I know for sure that White Haven can come up with something else if he has to.

[Panzersharkcat]

How well would a state practicing armed neutrality fit in when power blocs form? I think that's how I want to play the Bastian Star Empire. I'm not entirely certain as that may crimp story potential unless it becomes a massive refugee center or a negotiating ground.

Remember, we don't actually anticipate the whole galaxy turning into a war zone or anything. Neutrality just means you aren't taking sides in other people's wars, it doesn't mean you don't have interests or goals of your own, or that people in your country don't have them- and remember that most good stuff in these games comes from the behavior of individuals, not nations acting on vast impersonal scales.

Sure. I may some of my people run around as mercs and arms salesmen while other citizens run around as peace makers.

[Agent Sorchus]

There is one mechanical thing that I think needs to be changed for SDNW5 from the 4 rules. Namely get rid of the free home sector. Since it was free and it was so weighty in GDP it slewed the NCP 'value.' This meant the nations were more clustered in terms of power than the NCP roll intended. (And the NCP was pretty damn close in terms of power already)

[Simon_Jester]

Duly noted and considered. You have a point. I'll think over how to balance it.

I think I want the spread in sizes to be at most around 30%, the difference between a nation with a 'strength' of 2X and one of 3X. How that is achieved and what random factor is needed to make it happen is up in the air.

[Tanasinn]

Don't think anyone plans to do this, but please refrain from blanking the wiki - I'll probably be salvaging (and modifying) the Humanist Union from it. Albiet under a different name, since my idea of how their politics work has changed from since I introduced them in this game and when I put them in the last STGOD I was in.

[Simon_Jester]

I too favor not blanking the wiki- I wrote a huge amount of content for a nation I'm not done telling stories about.

I can work out what to do with the wiki over time- it's not actually going to be that hard to figure out, IMO.

[Beowulf]

I'd suggest just leaving the Wiki alone as an archive of the game. I wasn't quite done with Tianguo's concept, though probably not going to bring it back as the polity it was ever. I do tend to bring back ideas from one game to the next. Sometimes I scrap them as they turn out to be ridiculous, but often the same thing will come back (how weapons work, etc). We can start a new wiki for the next game.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes. Or we can sort of, I dunno, just file the SDNW4 stuff off to one side and start fresh in the same wiki: "Worlds of SDN" is a good name and many of the articles are good.

[Tanasinn]

Using the same wiki'd be fine, though all of that old content could end up confusing new players considering joining.

[Akhlut]

Could have it that all new entries for SDNW5 should have something at the top explicitly stating the new content is for 5.

[Ryan Thunder]

Could have it that all new entries for SDNW5 should have something at the top explicitly stating the new content is for 5.

Just put it in an SDNW5 category, and the old ones in an SDNW4 category. That's what they're for.

Factions that are common to both would be in both categories and be divided into SDNW4 and SDNW5 sections. Like what they do on wikis for games in a series with common characters and items.

If there's a completely new faction that shares a name just append "(SDNW5)" to the article name.

That seems to fit the convention.

[Siege]

We should be focusing on making #5 a fun game that lasts. Not on irrelevant matters like the Wiki.

[OmegaChief]

Trouble is Siege, the wiki is a QoL thing for a lot of people that impacts thier fun, and a lot of people have invested a lot in it so I think you can udnerstand how people might get attached.

In my experiance (Not with SDNW obiviously, but with a similar game, found here) with a good moderator (Possibley a couple or as someone who isn't activly playing themselves to maintain neutrality) and clear simple rules (Or guidlines as you more accuratly termed them to give creative players more leeway) should help.

Another thing that might help was if we had an 'extended planning' period and encouraged everyone to work together (if only with thier local neighbours) from the start, to intertwin multi player plot hooks, or plot hooks between individual players throughout the history of thier nations, from the recent to the ancient should get everyone used to communicating with each other as well as leaving the whole game with one metric ton of story ideas from the get go.

Oh, yea consider this me throwing my hat into this participation/discussion ring >.>

[Akhlut]

A diverse group of players would help wonderfully, to that end. So, how do we recruit them into the game?

Also, the more we have players talking and figuring shit out, the better. The OOC threads for 4 did not seem to do a good job of fostering anything other than quips and some reviews, though, so we need something more conducive to conversations about how the game and narratives should work (similar to this thread). So, should we have two separate OOC threads? One for sort of "lol, nice job there" sort of comments, and another for more serious discussion of communities and narratives?

Plus, I think we should have a decent lead into the game, but I don't think it should take too long. I think that taking too long to get the game actually moving would harm enthusiasm more than help it simply because people would start getting impatient, I think.

[OmegaChief]

True, striking a balance between a long enough lead in time to let everyone get written up, interacting and for lack of a better term 'hyped' for the game and simply taking so long that everyone nods off while they're wating.

I do like the idea of a genearl OOC natter thread and a serious "Feedback/Analysis/What you could do better" thread, but not everyone migth appricate it though which is the problem.

[Simon_Jester]

We could try it, Comrade Omega. Have a natter thread and an analysis/plotting thread. Trying to keep the two threads segregated would be difficult and possibly pointless, but as an experiment, I don't see how it would do any harm.

What do you think, Siege? You're doing well as devil's advocate and gadfly so far here.


That said...

We should be focusing on making #5 a fun game that lasts. Not on irrelevant matters like the Wiki.

Siege, please don't be exclusionist. If someone has an idea that can be acted on in a straightforward way, let them say it. You, personally, might not care whether the suggestion is implemented or not, but other people do, and it's their game too. It's only when we get bogged down in bickering over details of the rules ("will we let psychics do X?") that any real time or energy is wasted.

If every time anyone wants to talk about the game someone yells at them for wasting time, SDNW5 will be neither fun nor long-lived.