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Poll: Which modern Achaean House is the best and why?
Curious to see what people's thoughts are. I'd prefer you don't just vote for your own House, I want to hear WHY you find it the most interesting. The purpose? The people? The patron? The culture?
The forums limit is 10 options so take the poll
Support and discuss your choices below!
The forums limit is 10 options so take the poll
Support and discuss your choices below!
0
Comments
Great culture, requirements, rank titles, and leadership (<3 @Ysela and @Saeva). I truly enjoyed my time there. I never got a chance to try the Legates, unfortunately.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
tl;dr Post-Ren Houses are functioning the way they've been designed to; Virtuosi are great because paths actually cohesively contribute to the House's purpose and the people make it great.
On Daeir's points - post-Renaissance, Houses are an extension of their city (with the exception of Merchants and CIJ), and other than serving their own cities are not designed for any external function (outside of, like, proselytizing and combat), and so in that sense they're operating as intended (even if in my opinion it cut off a lot of rich avenues for House and city RP). A lot of the functions of old Houses (like knighthood) have moved to other orgs (in Cyrene, the Order of Thurisaz). We've sacrificed the beautiful things (and the terrible things) about complexity for a more black-and-white view of the world, which has served to foster intra-org unity, but at a cost. I used to very much dislike the new pared down, deeply factionalized Achaea but I've grown to rather enjoy how it's shaped Cyrene. I don't fit well in the other orgs these days.
Post-Renaissance, I've played in Virtuosi and Outriders and alted in a couple other cities/Houses, so I have less experience than I did pre-Renaissance to compare. The Virtuosi is my favorite House because the requirements are more interactive and RP/character development-heavy than just checking things off of a list. The paths have successive tasks that build on each other and culminate in a public performance, and require interaction (which can be more or less intensive depending on the path) with a proctor. I could see the benefit of not having all finales be public given that when there were more folks graduating and yearly concerts it wore on people, but lately we have fewer graduations and concerts are spaced further apart, so they seem to be more enjoyed when they do happen.
As someone who plays mainly for the slice-of-life RP and creativity outlet, I get endless enjoyment out of the paths (at least until I've finished all 10, which will take RL years). I hate the checking things off a list for the sake of checking things off a list and doing the same task and regurgitating the same information everyone else has method of advancement, so I'm especially fond of our way of doing things. I like that the skills you learn - trying different styles of art, interpreting art, learning how to organize events, learning how to do longform emote RP, etc. - build towards the purpose of the House, which is (as I understand it) to promote art and culture in Cyrene. I like that there's a lot of things to do and try aside from just churning out requirements to advance and eventually assume positions of leadership, but/and also there are opportunities to get involved in leadership, too.
I really dig that our concerts are open to anyone to perform and that people actually do. I do miss the old CAOA (it was basically Ty Beirdd paths for non-Beirdd) because I feel it could still serve a purpose in the sense of getting the broader world involved in art, but I more or less get why it's gone. We still do occasionally have non-Virtuosi folks who enjoy having a venue to perform or a pool of people to learn from or hire as performers, which is great.
The other main reason I love the House is that it's a very familial atmosphere (and not just because a lot of us are ICly related). My personal experience has been that people tend not to hold grudges over House politics or let it affect friendships in the long term, which is great. In general I like that we are very interaction-heavy, welcoming, and friendly to new people.
If I weren't in the Virtuosi (and could stand combat-heavy environments and/or more factional RP) I'd love to try out the Shield, the Harbingers, the Luminai, the Merchants, and the Krymenian Academy because I think their purposes are pretty killer, too. I know CIJ has been quiet lately but I've always really dug their purpose as well.
Anyway. I somewhat agree that Post-ren all Houses feel slightly meh. Old Houses, to me, were better in every possible way, except perhaps in regards to class restriction. I don't think the New Houses have found their feet yet, for the most part. The Virtuosi at least, though, seems to do pretty well, at least within Cyrene, which is what matters the most. Not all Houses aim for worldwide renown (though it'd be nice and fitting if they did) I see much less regarding the Outriders, unfortunately ,even though their concept fascinates me as well.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Two of them don't use the forums, so I'll share the sentiment and I'm sure that it'll give them the fuzzies, too.
Don't get me started
The one thing that I enjoy about the Academy is that it is very casual to the point where you can take time off to hunt to dragon, take time off to what do whatever, even go dormant for a while and it allows you to pick up right where you left off with out really missing anything.
With estate finally being finished a lot of positive things have happened to the Academy and with the current lineup of leadership I expect it to continue.
There is no benefit to burning people out before they even reach HR5. 'If they don't like it, they can quit' is not a valid justification because that person sitting at HR1 for a RL year while they do random stuff is not a detriment to the House in any way. Even when icons were a thing and that person would be draining the icon without contributing, you could just restrict the benefit and problem solved.
If nothing else you can probably find some Order willing to play slow pitch shrinewar with you. Do it Darkenwood style, keep it contained to one area, etc.
You can't do this in Cyrene tho.
I maintain that the Shield -could- be a great house, if some things were different. We have a good advancement system, and some of the most interesting/best written ceremonies that I've seen post-reneissance. But Cyrene as a whole can be very stifling to combatants (let's remember that "you can't bring conflict to Cyrene" means that you can't defend other cities, and that you have to accept all comers as dauntless for fear that Ashtan might come again), we've lost most of our best fighters and teachers to boredom/dormancy/political disagreement (Aerek/Kenway/Dochitha/Wessux), and while I like our leaders as people, the most I've seen them do to address our dwindling numbers is to make the novice requirements easier, which has unsurprisingly done little to motivate the people who aren't advancing anyways. I think it's going to take sustained effort by people to start building this house up, and I don't see it happening currently, particularly since our leaders, like all Cyrenian ones, it seems, have little interest in stepping down no matter how long they've been in power or how little time or ideas they have.
I gave the outriders a solid try once on an alt, but that place is just a fetid cesspool of wasted potential. It's one of the biggest houses, with a unique concept, but it has next to no activity or identity, and leadership that seems to think their job is bureaucracy and little else. Not only that, but almost all the leaders (every member of the triumverate+the HON) is also a senator, so you get the same isolated attitude the city has in the house that's supposed to be against that, and you get people who have little time to give to either job. It sucks, because there are some amazing explorers in that house, or who have left it. For a fun game, compare Ahmet/Edena/Frederich's explorer ranking to any of the outriders house leadership. Much as that's not a perfect measure, it gives a good sense of who actually puts time/energy into doing stuff the house is about. Further, the leaders seem only interested in promoting very old players into any of the leadership positions (the house has three that -should- be used to get new ideas and new blood into the house). Basically, you have Cyrene's government directly in charge of this house, and it goes about like you'd expect.
I've tried a few other houses briefly (not enough to seriously understand the way they work, to be clear), but I was never really drawn in.
The Somatikos has a lot of cool people, but no one seems to know what the point of the house is in practical terms. They reject being a combat house, but they don't seem to want to be anything else. With the Krymenian being about academic RP, it seems like the somatikos is just everything that's -not- that, especially with Hashan's population boom bringing in a lot more people.
The Krymenian has good potential and what seem to be good leaders, they just seem to slightly lack a few really good writers/roleplayers to really tackle the rp aspects of things. The biggest shame here, in my mind, is that the house did such a bad job bringing the old alchemy academy into the fold/building upon what they did, making it's removal a major loss for the game, and one that this house hasn't managed to truly make up for. Their estate is awesome, though, I'll say that.
The Insidium just felt too generalized, to me. I played in Mhaldor with the old houses, and I honestly think they worked better then the new ones. Mhaldor is a small community with a very strong identity, and so these large conglomerate houses that try to accommodate all interests don't seem to add a whole lot, or mean a whole lot. The old houses offered distinctly different Mhaldorian experiences and perspectives, and, to me, fleshed out being Mhaldorian a lot. The new houses don't manage that to at all the same extent, and offer much more generalized identities instead.
The Dawnblade is a combat house in a combat city, and so much as I liked the people and such, it always seemed pretty limited. As a Targossian, it'd be easy to get into combat in any of the houses, and you -have- to, to some extent, so being in a house that pushes combat seemed far more redundant then, for instance, the shield. That said, I liked the people and overall liked the house fine, I just wish they did more to to give a unique perspective on the fighting you're already going to be doing as a Targossian. Some good ceremonies and such would do a lot for the house, I think.
Anyways, this post ended up much longer then intended, it's basically my accumulated frustrations and rants with how things have turned out. Overall, I personally feel like the renaissance has failed in a lot of ways. We lost an absolutely huge amount of history, of built up roleplay, and of place in the world, and the pre-planned houses we got instead have generally struggled to realize their concept or create identities.
The Cyrene combat house is floundering because it is a combat house in Cyrene. That's really all there is to it.
You are not going to have a healthy combat house in a city that actively avoids all conflict because a city that actively avoids conflict won't maintain a stable population of fighters. That is the bottom line. The good fighters, generally speaking, like to fight. As a result they, generally speaking, don't live in cities that try to avoid fighting. There is no way to fix the house unless you can address this discrepancy.
As for the Academy, what you see is a shell that we (by we, I mean 5 people not including me) are trying to fill in. The original concept was, no offence to the founders, far too narrow and it was going to turn into another Spiritwalkers fiasco. So basically, if you want to come in and write a bunch of stuff up on alchemy, I'm all for it., but you can't sit there and blame the founders for leaving a gap that nobody else has bothered to fill either. Personally, I find alchemy and astronomy to be about as interesting as getting my toenails ripped off, so I'm not sure as hell not going to do it.
#WhiteKnightForTheHouse