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Comments
→My Mudlet Scripts
Bards Guild: "Hello, young adventurer! Sign here and we'll teach you how to be a Bard! You'll learn the intricacies of your class."
This isn't to say it couldn't work, since there are players who'd enjoy adding or exploring the extra layers to their character, but I think it'd cause a lot of the orgs to lose relevance atm to add more.
Could be nice to have the option to call yourself a guild or a house, though, and for each option to provide different customisables to the org.
Houses not only provide necessary help files but the people in the house are actually willing to help because they been given the proper training to do so. Houses feels like a family now and I like it and don't want to ever see it go away.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Years ago, before I went dormant the first time, Neraeos often discussed House matters with me as the then-Patron of both the Mojushai and Cyrene. I expressed a view to him very similar to yours, and he shared with me that Houses were not meant to be families. Being close is fine, but when you forget your House is a driving organization with a purpose beyond brotherhood, then a House loses its identity.
It was the first time my mind was open to the idea that Houses are meant to help -drive- the world we live in, not just a place to keep scrolls, friends, and other such things. It's something I still follow today, in any org I'm in. Save family RP for your family, but for your House, drive forward their identity, whatever that is, always.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
→My Mudlet Scripts
As to the opinion on Neraeos, I am 99% sure any God who actually cares does that (aka, not the half-dormant ones), on a fairly consistent basis. Neraeos was just more up front about it. But hey, you're entitled to your opinions, and obviously mine is a tad biased.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
→My Mudlet Scripts
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
I wonder sometimes that the rigidly hierarchical organisations fall down in this respect because of the top down mentality, where something doesn't happen unless orders come through from the elders and the younger members/lower ranks find they have much less input, where in the top setup they'd actually feel comfortable enough to experiment, join in and suggest things.
The voice of Melantha, Goddess of the Seasons, echoes amid the rustle of leaves, "That's the censored version."
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
Somewhere.
Maybe.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
The voice of Melantha, Goddess of the Seasons, echoes amid the rustle of leaves, "That's the censored version."
Join: Newbie, HNT, CNT.
Lvl 11: Market
Level 30: Class.
At City Discretion: CT
At House Discretion: HT
As far as houses being ideologically centered instead of class centered, I'm all for that. There's no reason a person whose class happens to be 'blademaster', for instance, can't learn to use the skills and talents he or she has to, let's say, perform with the Ty Beirdd. Or sell stuff with the Merchants. Those things should be at the houses discretion, not at a hard-coded discretion. If the house feels person X is suited to their house, then the house should be able to welcome person X into their house, regardless of what class they are.
Now. Perhaps there are too many houses per city. That's entirely possible. Perhaps there need to be less houses, with more diverse branches within the house. I'm not speaking as to all that. And clearly, some houses might restrict people based on their class... But let them restrict it, and make exceptions if they so choose. Run by the players, for the players, with the Gods acting as Divine Guidance, not the decision-makers.
Just my two cents.
(The Midnight Crew): Micaelis says, "Lynara coded periods out of his DNA."
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
Huh, so I'm a bit late to the party, but: interesting thread. Also, I find myself agreeing with a lot of @Santar's posts these days. When did that happen? Change is frightening.
I think city novicehood is probably the right way to go but it also raises a whole bunch of interesting questions about how modern Achaea is structured.
Back in the day, the Guilds were god. They controlled class, and therefore players. If your Guild had your back, you were fine. Cities were nice, but they were secondary. Power, as it does, corrupted though, and autoclass brought the reign of the guilds to an end, which left us with Houses. The players, at the time, were told "go wild!", your House can now be anything you want it to be. But people fear change, and so what Houses generally became were guilds without the purpose or power, with some notable exceptions (the Merchants, Ty Beirdd, the Occultists, the Naga).
So guildmasters no longer wielded the power of effectively confiscating the hundreds of dollars you'd spent on the game, and this was good. But Houses were kind of wishy-washy and lame, and that was bad. So: class-linked houses became the thing. This did nothing to really help (because class-linkage without control doesn't really give you purpose, except as someone graphically said up-thread as a repository of help files), but it did completely screw over the very ones who had made a go of Houses (if they hadn't done so along class lines, like the Occies and the Naga).
So now Houses are, in many ways, and IMO, of course, nothing more than a repository of some interesting history and a few help files for various classes. This isn't to besmirch any of the excellent HMs/secretaries who work their ass off to make their House be fun and effective, but you're swimming against the structure which is always hard. In those circumstances, you need to work twice as hard to make something good, and the moment you take your eye off the ball, everything goes to hell and your HT becomes little more than a glorified clan.
A big part of me does think this is a terrible shame, even though strong guilds/houses inevitably lead to intra-city strife. Internal politics can be a fun and vicious game, and it's a game that's been played by most cities - even those ones that wouldn't like to admit it - like Cyrene and Mhaldor. It does however make factional RP more difficult, because internecine warfare is always bloodier and nastier and it draws the attention. It's hard for Shallam to effectively fight Evil or Chaos when the Dawnstriders hate the Guardians far more than they hate Sartan.
I don't really see a way back for Houses without the reversal of autoclass which is (understandably) off the agenda. It really is all about cities these days, and that may even be a good thing.
But I think it does leave Achaea feeling like there's a lot of... structural detritus around. Are Houses really good for anything any more? What are they *for*? Should there be a much more fluid set of organisations that rise and fall based on popularity at the time? Class academies based purely on class skills? Political parties? (Which: awesome idea, I really want this, though I know people would hate it). Houses just feel really fag-endy now. Kind of pointless. And that hasn't really been helped by the shifting admin view on them (guilds --> freeform houses --> class based houses -> city novicehood). It's shifting, I guess, because nothing's really worked yet and it'd be nice to fix it properly rather than just tinkering around the edges with something that feels structurally broken.
I dunno, I'm fairly removed from the day-to-day play these days, maybe people don't feel that way (and I know a lot of people will defend their House to their dying breath because they've put so much into it - I used to feel that way too), but feels like more change is needed and that shifting the emphasis of novicehood from the House to the city is going to hasten the long, slow death of guilds/houses but without really addressing the structural problems that creates.
tl;barely read it myself, but I'm at work on a Sunday so WALL OF TEXT.
8 years down the line, I think we can say that has not worked so well. It saddens me to say it, but I agree: Houses will lose what little function they still have when city novicehood comes in.
If we want to keep Houses, I think there has to be a definite benefit to joining them (beyond Icon bonuses). I would enjoy seeing House-specific skills, for example.
I'm not sure I like the term "glorified clan," as if clans are somehow inherently useless or worthless. If anything, I like clans a little bit more, because my favorite thing about roleplaying is its ability to change and be alive... and houses are these strange immortal structures that, lacking the ability to die (short of an undead elder dragon literally destroying the city your house was in), lack the ability to manage anything more than a fake life.
Clans at least can die, even if most end via boring apathy or the rare drama fallout (but that's to be expected in a world where corporal death is just a few minutes of inconvenience and a bit of experience).
That said, aside from the roleplaying implications, I think houses being immortal is one of their biggest problems (from a general design standpoint rather than something that makes them inherently awful). The main functions of a house are to teach novices and contribute to the overall roleplaying atmosphere. The former relies on teachers and teaching materials, while the latter relies on roleplayers and lore. All of these things can fluctuate or outright diminish over time. Thus, there's no real guarantee that, at any given time, any given house will be a good environment for players, new or old.
I don't have a good solution, but this is just why I think cities ought to have the role of taking care of novices, so houses can be more specialized toward the role of roleplaying. I have no particular evidence to prove that this will be a better outcome for either issue, except that I know there are many Achaeans who can teach people things without necessarily being the same class or in the same house at the time.
I also hope that the reduced scope will allow houses to evolve into something more interesting and engaging, although such evolution might come at its usual price.
(That usual price of evolution is survival of the fittest, aka death. Evolution is paid for with death. That's how it works. I just thought I'd be super extra obvious about pointing that out. >_> )