Suggestions on RP-Heavy hosted game?

[JaydedOne]

*smile* Very cool to already have some interest.

What would suit you most in terms of such a game? Toss out ideas of what you would and wouldn't like to see in terms of frills that a normal Dom3 game doesn't immediately implement. For example, the Council of Wyrms thread in Dom2 is great because of its emphasis on politics and role-play (lots of voting and discussion), its rules re: Pretender creation (if you play a Dragon, you get to vote; if not, you don't), and the way it implemented those to make a second form of game above the Dominions baseline experience.

Ideally, I'd like to do something that also creates that sort of a second game. Not Wyrms per se, but perhaps something that fleshes out some of the nations in Dominions or that gives individual Pretender choices more flavor, something that makes Death/Blood nations a bit more reviled by nations that don't resort to such tactics, etc.

Not sure what Era I'm leaning towards. I love the dying feeling of the Late Era, but I'm open to ideas. If nothing else, I'll just use the enthusiasm generated here and come up with something on my own as a test run for this sort of experience.

[RamsHead]

I would love to play Ashen Empire Ermor. Evil is always fun!

[JaydedOne]

RamsHead said:
I would love to play Ashen Empire Ermor. Evil is always fun!

To be fair to everyone, I'm not going to take placeholder choices of nations until I settle on an Era and rules and people commit to playing long-term under that paradigm. I'll put out an introductory post after everyone's offered suggestions and I have an idea of what I want to run, at which point if folks're interested, it'll be first-come, first-serve for the various nations.

[Shovah32]

Depending on hosting scheduel and era i may be in, so what if im in 2 server games and a PBEM game?

[Morkilus]

Council of Wyrms was fun, but if you couldn't keep up with the diplomacy and voting, you were pretty much screwed. Which was the whole point. I made some terrible decisions and only had 6 provinces the whole game, and without any power or political capital, I just sat there and sold hammers and my votes. The game ended when Dom3 came out. It was neat to have various AAR-like stories and debates on the CoW wiki. Some players like Ygorl and Puffyn were really into it, so I would not call it a total mess. Some people like complication in their games, I hear.

[Hadrian_II]

I'd like to join that game, but i'm not the best player.

[JaydedOne]

I am -far- from the best player, having played in only a handful of MP games and only recently discovering how to exploit and win in the SP game.

All are welcome.

[djo]

Most of the games I've joined, I joined because they have RP elements (I'm not a strong player).

In Council of Wyrms, I think things went mostly well, but we needed a "timer" to put pressure on the game. If we had D3's cumulative VPs, I think it would provided the final perfect element. If you look back at it, we did manage to generate a lot of diplomacy, and nearly one proposition per two or three turns. We stalled late due to a number of things (D3, fatigue, complicated alliances, fear of getting into a war). The theme aspect (all Wyrms) helped a lot, I think.

In the Yarnspinner games (I was in YS2), we were obviously mostly RP. It worked because enough (about 1/2) of the people were able to keep up with the writing. That formed a nice core where we had incentive to keep (a) writing and (b) interacting in character. In YS1, they got by with only 2 active writers. They developed their own theme toward the end (the coming final battle).

My thoughts on how to make it work:

(1) the people have to be into it; no insane max/min people--you've got to be able to do stupid things if it's in character or thematically appropriate (eg, Titan pretender is better for Arco than a Vampire Queen)

(2) theme helps a lot; I like your idea about mapping out who should be hostile or allied, at least initially (eg, Marignon should hate Ermor); good vs evil might work, hot vs cold; I'll try to think of some more unifying themes

(3) you can get by with the forums even though outside websites don't hurt

(4) did I mention the players have to be into it? you want people who are thinking to themselves right now, "wow, now I have an excuse to buy an army of (insert favorite inefficient unit here)"

(4a) and spells! who hasn't wanted to summon one of every (for example) death summons, whether you needed them or not? because it's fun! and possibly thematic for your nation!

(5) and don't forget the trash-talk! Pasha is our pioneer in this area; games with lots of in-character trash talk can be a lot of fun

There's a strong probability I'd join this game

[edit: added 4a]