Boethiah
Dark Messiah
Hey Chaos,
Some of you may have read a recent post I made suggesting that we all spend a bit more time putting our character's developments, and into the wars that we so love to fight. Otherwise if you haven't feel free to do so or disregard it all together. I'm here to talk about something else.
Factions are great but in my experience every roleplay community struggles to come up with agreeable terms for how factions must engage in wars, conquests, alliances, and politics. Political RP seems to be one of those love-or-hate things but when multiple people of many walks of life aim to rule their own faction you will always find conflict of interest.
A key to having successful faction roleplay -- that I've found -- is that not everything has to be organic. Sometimes a bit of preplanning and limitations can go a long way to improve the quality of roleplay. Be warned, however, turning from a strong roleplay community into a lite roleplaying game is a common mistake from going down this path. We want to allow people as much free form as possible, or at least I do, without it inevitably screwing someone over. Keeping as many people happy as possible. So I came up with an idea.
What if factions had to pick a focus? Before you skip to the reply section please do hear me out.
In many lore pieces, RPGs, and EU editions The Republic is always this large galactic government but inevitably turns out to be militarily weak -- requiring the Jedi to keep them strong. Why? Well one theory is that with so much political diversity you need a very complex government, which means so much focus is drawn away that it becomes difficult to have a proper defense force. Funding, personnel, and support is hard to come by. So it makes sense. But for Chaos this doesn't exist unless faction leaders want it to.
In that I find that it'd make plenty of sense that all the major factions -- perhaps minors too -- should have a specific focus. Now two reasons for this idea.
1.) It'll help factions roleplay better by giving them direction to go off; inevitably shaping a faction's culture.
2.) It'll keep some balance between factions, encourage cooperation, and create distinct advantages and disadvantages.
An example of my idea:
Production Focus: A faction focuses on producing new technologies, starships, weapons, vehicles, and developing their nation at large through industry and production. Perhaps this means factions have a set number of affiliated factory submissions and by focusing on production you get a bonus to that number.
Expansion Focus: A faction focuses on expanding their borders by invading enemy territory and bringing rogue worlds under their belt. Perhaps this means they get a bonus to how many dominion/invasion threads they can have, or cut back the number of posts required to successfully do so.
Research Focus: A faction focuses on researching into advancing its technologies and acquiring rare resources and knowledge to do so. Perhaps this means they require less dev thread posts to complete certain dev threads or are given more leeway towards specific restrictions.
All of these ideas are purely hypothetical and left up to debate. The core framework of this idea is what I'm trying to pitch here, so please give your thoughts but feel free criticize my examples just as much.
Some of you may have read a recent post I made suggesting that we all spend a bit more time putting our character's developments, and into the wars that we so love to fight. Otherwise if you haven't feel free to do so or disregard it all together. I'm here to talk about something else.
Factions are great but in my experience every roleplay community struggles to come up with agreeable terms for how factions must engage in wars, conquests, alliances, and politics. Political RP seems to be one of those love-or-hate things but when multiple people of many walks of life aim to rule their own faction you will always find conflict of interest.
A key to having successful faction roleplay -- that I've found -- is that not everything has to be organic. Sometimes a bit of preplanning and limitations can go a long way to improve the quality of roleplay. Be warned, however, turning from a strong roleplay community into a lite roleplaying game is a common mistake from going down this path. We want to allow people as much free form as possible, or at least I do, without it inevitably screwing someone over. Keeping as many people happy as possible. So I came up with an idea.
What if factions had to pick a focus? Before you skip to the reply section please do hear me out.
In many lore pieces, RPGs, and EU editions The Republic is always this large galactic government but inevitably turns out to be militarily weak -- requiring the Jedi to keep them strong. Why? Well one theory is that with so much political diversity you need a very complex government, which means so much focus is drawn away that it becomes difficult to have a proper defense force. Funding, personnel, and support is hard to come by. So it makes sense. But for Chaos this doesn't exist unless faction leaders want it to.
In that I find that it'd make plenty of sense that all the major factions -- perhaps minors too -- should have a specific focus. Now two reasons for this idea.
1.) It'll help factions roleplay better by giving them direction to go off; inevitably shaping a faction's culture.
2.) It'll keep some balance between factions, encourage cooperation, and create distinct advantages and disadvantages.
An example of my idea:
Production Focus: A faction focuses on producing new technologies, starships, weapons, vehicles, and developing their nation at large through industry and production. Perhaps this means factions have a set number of affiliated factory submissions and by focusing on production you get a bonus to that number.
Expansion Focus: A faction focuses on expanding their borders by invading enemy territory and bringing rogue worlds under their belt. Perhaps this means they get a bonus to how many dominion/invasion threads they can have, or cut back the number of posts required to successfully do so.
Research Focus: A faction focuses on researching into advancing its technologies and acquiring rare resources and knowledge to do so. Perhaps this means they require less dev thread posts to complete certain dev threads or are given more leeway towards specific restrictions.
All of these ideas are purely hypothetical and left up to debate. The core framework of this idea is what I'm trying to pitch here, so please give your thoughts but feel free criticize my examples just as much.
