I'd like to get a better tally of opinions from players:



How this will work:
- You can end up discussing ideas among yourselves, but please provide a bullet-point, brief summary of your opinion at the top of your post, so I can keep up and continue to tally things.
- It's important to remember that at the end of the day, our opinions can be different. We shouldn't argue to the point that we become upset or inflamed. Recognize that some people will not be convinced otherwise, and that we still need their opinion regardless of whether or not you agree with it.
- If you agree with a previous idea, your input is still valued. It's as simple as copying the bullet point and posting it yourself. Please do it, so we can get an idea of what ideas are supported by others.
- If you agree with a previous idea, but have only a slightly different take, or wish to expand on it, copy the original bullet point and explain your difference in a paragraph or so below and add "([Insertyourname's] View)". If that 'amendment' ends up picking up more support than the original idea, I will replace or add it.


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Example Posts:

1.) Mr. Hackum's:



2.) Player 2's Post


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Why do this?
My goal is to get an aggregate, succinct opinion from the playerbase on what conflict they want to see. Eventually, when the community has an organized, detailed idea of what we want to see, players who want to help by giving the server some conflict can look back at this, understand what the playerbase desires, and create a concept that works within this. It can be used also as an organizing structure. You can find people who have like-minded desires and pool your thoughts, group up to do something neat, who knows!

Later, once we've got the base ideas outlined, I'm going to try to shift the discussion into brainstorming actual conflict concepts. Nothing in too great a detail, of course. But it will give us a very final, helpful suggestion to aspiring conflict makers and those who want to experience it from the good side.

Desired Conflict
Supported
* DM-supported, PC-Driven for normal cases.
* Creation of DM & PC driven Quick-Conflict Option (Hackum's View)
* Less Emphasis on PvP
* New Conflict themes that respect the achievements of Good guys.

Added
* New Conflict themes that respect the achievements of Evil guys.
* New Conflict themes that respect the achievements of Neutral guys.
* More emphasis on general antagonism and competitiveness rather than open conflict.
* More response from the game world to conflict.
* More opportunities to indirectly resolve conflicts.

Explanation

I've written it elsewhere as well, but PC-driven conflict is far more dynamic and interesting than NPC-driven conflict.


I agree. Nothing more to add.


I agree. Nothing more to add.


I agree. Nothing more to add.


This idea should go both ways.


This idea should go all ways.


Even Good characters can compete over something, or fall into conflict over it. Seeking out conflict for the sake of conflict might not be the right course, but establishing context or objectives which might lead to competition and conflict would.


A fairly notorious interaction between Aurelius, Richard Johnson and Darby resulted in a lot of NPC attention that endures to this day. The world should remember conflicts and respond to them as appropriate.


Finance. Regional economics. Politics. Sack that trade caravan to Kohlingen and watch the price of healing potions in its temples skyrocket.

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Aernoud Van Brabant: Heir of the House. Proprietor of the Beer Wagon.
"Go to the Mayfields, have a pint, and wait for this to blow over."
Aurelius: Sunmaster of Amaunator. Contemplative. Aspirant to Transcendance.
"Sol Invictus"

Just so it's clean and concise, (And less length), if you've nothing to add to an idea, but support it, feel free to simply post it as a bullet point without an explanation. I'll modify my example to reflect this.

Desired Conflict:

* DM-supported, PC-Driven for normal cases.
* Creation of DM & PC driven Quick-Conflict Option (Hackum's View)
* Less Emphasis on PvP
* New Conflict themes that respect the achievements of Good guys.

Explanations:



I agree with what you say, but I think it holds true for any PC, not just 'Good'.
I like the idea of setting challenges based on class, as well.

I speak in reference to my main character, Crow, who has a position of authority in two different places. One on 'A' Server, and one on 'B'. Both of those positions were earned, and the Ranger Captain position was not earned easily, or quickly. Neither was handed to him, because he was simply there. But, as far as conflict is concerned, and based not on CvC (heh), it is good, to keep from getting lethargic. It's not easy to stay at the top. Now Crow, is anything but lethargic (ignore the past 2 weeks of his life please, a drunk binge is not lethargic!), but he is also fallible. Challenges to his authority are common, in fact (as you know, Hackums ), which leads to...


...this. This seems to imply DM overseen CvC, which I approve of. Some positions of authority see very little physical conflict. Not so, with the Ranger Captain, lol. But recently, Crow is going through a very self driven ...issue, and it has made him much less aggressive, and more at peace, even though he's being torn in half emotionally. Because of this, I have been trying hard, to keep him at bay, and he stands down much more often now. It's been developing for several months now, since a DM event. Anyway, this type of conflict is common for me, so it's not much of an issue, other than trying to keep Crow from holding his tongue, or drawing steel, heh.

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So, I'm going through many of the old conflict threads and taking opinions to translate them into bullet points here. Mind, this is a slow process. The first thread I've hit was this: http://amiaworld.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=77956

Here are some summarized points, to use or not use as you like. THESE ARE SUGGESTIONS:

* More emphasis on general antagonism and competitiveness rather than open conflict. (As Elorathall said)
* Constructive, not Destructive-based conflict
* Destructive, not Constructive-based conflict
* Finding alternatives to murder. Concepts involving predominantly lesser crimes.
* Breaking the Cyclical "Death, Raise, Return."
* Accepting/Creating longer-lasting, alternative consequences to death.
* Diverse Concepts and execution. Something new.
* Less use of respawning, raising dead.
* Chaos vs Law
* Good vs Evil
* Emphasis on dice/Roleplayed combat, rather than mechanical.
* Secretive evil/chaos
* Open Conflict concepts.





I will say, though, that if you use some of these like "Breaking the Cyclical 'Death, Raise, Return'" that it should be not only what you expect out of others, but offer to maintain yourself.

add race vs race to the list hackums, we dwarves take our orc smashing serius

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-Ja'acira Arrows'R'Us
-Balorin Wolfhammer- A dwarf so old he remember when the Beer stein was invented
Saisha Jai'diem Knight of bahamut, and abit of a looker

In case it needs to be spelled out, this includes subterfuge, corruption, mud-slinging, back-room deals, advertising & public relations, and all the other machinations of politics.

Definitely. However, I don't think that this will ever happen without some sort of temporary but cumulative short-term death penalties lasting several RL hours or days, or at the very least a cooldown timer (see below). And I don't see that ever happening because it will drive away the power-levellers and min-maxers for whom the journey to epic is something to be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible. This is in addition to long-term cumulative penalties (see further below).

Hm. Interesting. I suppose you could put a cooldown timer on some of these abilities, but I'm not sure if that would be more of a problem than not.

Slow, cumulative penalties for repeated deaths might also encourage players to rely on solutions other than combat. For example, each ability score, as well as movement rate, gets a random threshold of 35-65 points or some such. Each time you die, mechanically, one point gets assigned at random to one of the 7 categories. When a category reaches the threshold, the ability drops 1 point or movement is reduced by 5% and the threshold is reset. The number is high enough that occasional lag deaths or similar things won't contribute much and the rate of decline will be slow but a definite concern for those who fight a lot. Again, I don't think it'll ever fly.

* Give advantages to lower-level characters and/or disadvantages to higher-levels.

Make people want to play lower-levels. As I suggested in another thread, this could include some sort of reputation variable that drives up prices for epics or bars them from certain places without explicit (DM) permission. Perhaps more competition by NPCs/settlements 'investing in their future' by currying the favour of lower-level characters. The long-term cumulative death penalties I suggested above might also go some way toward making people want to stay at lower levels and fight less. I'm sure there are other things we could do, but making lower-levels more desirable and/or interesting and/or fun to play could ease the emphasis on epics.

* More NPC involvement in player conflicts.

Via a reputation system for PCs vs settlements/NPCs or at the very least more vocal NPCs.

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~Sharess on AmiaWiki~
Priestess, politician, prostitute
"[They] were moving in on me like Sharessans on a new broad in the bath house" - Tracer Bolt
AmiaWiki mod (mostly inactive)

I don't have anything particular to add at the moment, perhaps when I have a chance to gather my thoughts. But for the time being I wanted to offer my thanks to Hackums for taking this sort of initiative. I encourage the community to follow the outline Hackums has provided so that we can gather information in this fashion, and I hope Hackums will stick with it so that the community as a whole can see where we're at.

Thank you for taking this on and producing this idea, Hackums. I look forward to seeing the results.

Desired Conflict
Supported
* DM-supported, PC-Driven for normal cases.
* Creation of DM & PC driven Quick-Conflict Option (Hackum's View)
* Less Emphasis on PvP
* New Conflict themes that respect the achievements of Good guys.
* New Conflict themes that respect the achievements of Evil guys.
* New Conflict themes that respect the achievements of Neutral guys.
* More emphasis on general antagonism and competitiveness rather than open conflict.
* More response from the game world to conflict.
* More opportunities to indirectly resolve conflicts.
Added
*Hard Choices
*Riddle Me this Batman! (Intricate & Thought Driven)


Explanations: Hard Choices




Explanations: Riddle Me this Batman! (Intricate & Thought Driven)

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Seconded. There was a thread not too long ago about about clerics and faith, I think - something I'd love to see addressed more (since I play a cleric...). How does a cleric respond to an apparent heretic? How do they deal with crises of faith? How do they interpret omens or signs, especially those of dubious nature?

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~Sharess on AmiaWiki~
Priestess, politician, prostitute
"[They] were moving in on me like Sharessans on a new broad in the bath house" - Tracer Bolt
AmiaWiki mod (mostly inactive)

Could be extended to diviners as well, foreseeing. And yes, I say this because I play a diviner. But I love the aspect of divination foreseeing, but is is so hard to implement in game. Maybe this way, underlined, as said above by Xaviera.

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http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/spells.htm

I'll update this thread with some of the feedback I've received later today.

But I need more opinions! It doesn't need to be anything well-developed or written out, and if you're deterred by my formatting, don't worry about it and just post anyway.

Conflicts of moral dilemma that don't have clear cut good and bad lines:

Not exactly FR applicable but take for instances the "Right to life" and "right to die" moral debates. You can craft an argument for either side, both of which would be compelling if well constructed, but neither will be clearly right.


I believe people should have the right to die because it's the freedom of their life, and there is no victim in the event.
I believe people should not have the right to die because suicide is a "permanent solution to a temporary problem"

I believe we should be able to abort children because between the ages of gestation to 1 year (arguably much older, 5-6+) they are not capable of the cognitive and logical aptitude that defines us as humans and sets us apart from other animals on the planet (not entirely true there are some pretty darn intelligent critters out there)

I believe that we should not be able to abort children because the potential for their life exists regardless of where they are developmentally.

I guess more FR applicable would be: Authoritarian government aims to seize control of childhood education by taking away children from their parents to put them into specialized schools where highly trained professionals / caregivers provide them the pinnacle of education and care to ensure they have the best future possible, and champion the future of said society with unparalleled levels of education. A consequence of this action causes parents to never see their children again until they are of age to set foot outside of these specialized environments, and also they lose their role in the child's life permanently.

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bad man

I too support a higher focus on moral dilemma/conflict in the game, but the problem with this is that real-world morality and ideology tends to seep into the game.

Take for example "imperialism". It's generally a dirty word in our contemporary world, but in the 19th century a country's prestige demanded possession of colonies. And face it, conquest is incredibly lucrative. Most great empires stagnated and collapsed as soon as they could grow no further.

What I find more telling IG is how the concept of democracy is upheld as the morally just way of governing, while there majority of functioning realms are either kingdoms or oligarchies. They'd likely ensure that the notion of an elective government is considered insurrection, at least.

And so on.

_________________
Aernoud Van Brabant: Heir of the House. Proprietor of the Beer Wagon.
"Go to the Mayfields, have a pint, and wait for this to blow over."
Aurelius: Sunmaster of Amaunator. Contemplative. Aspirant to Transcendance.
"Sol Invictus"

I just want to toss this out here-


I hate to see conflict for the sake of conflict- always let there be a legitimate reason for the conflict, supported by some form of plot.

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This sums up my thoughts on the matter, beautifully. Well done, Shadow.

Not gonna lie though, I do love seeing the discussion on the subject matter.

I didn't read everyone's posts but will give my thoughts for now.

You know, I am starting to think differently about 'designing' conflict all together. At least for the PC. I think the PC should just let themselves fall into conflict with PCs only when it is necessitated by some arc. A plot-line like recent Caraigh (of which I have been spending all my RP time) has created a huge successful cloud of conflict for PCs and NPCs alike because they're following the story and seeking the things they need to do in order to progress, meanwhile, this attracts other PCs to do a similar interactions with their environment, we shouldn't worry if or if not they are going to bump heads at some point, chances are they will. But if the plot is well orchestrated, conflict becomes the inevitable side-effect for character's actions and feelings to roll against one another, and this is dynamic.

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MuseReader: Aiseth Nosdivan- Master Enchantress

My thoughts are in summary echoed by PassionateShadow's assessment, conflict should always have a reason and purpose whatever form it takes, and PvP should be the last option explored barring extraneous circumstances *Usually created by situations where past attempts at less violent resolution have faltered or similar. or a situation where realistically violence must be enacted due to the RP of the situation*. (Especially Lethal PvP combat)