Factional Classes

Liyane

Blujixapug said:

But to outsiders, years ago, Chaos was just rainbows and nonsense, with a side of secret societies (and infanticide).

One of the strangest things coming back for me was learning that Ashtan had become this big bad fighting force that was opposing all the other nations during the Black Wave. My memories of them had them more... eccentric as you describe rather than malevolent.

Minifie

Liyane said:

Blujixapug said:

But to outsiders, years ago, Chaos was just rainbows and nonsense, with a side of secret societies (and infanticide).

One of the strangest things coming back for me was learning that Ashtan had become this big bad fighting force that was opposing all the other nations during the Black Wave. My memories of them had them more... eccentric as you describe rather than malevolent.

Ashtan was the whole "Freedom" shtick, except the Occultists were incredibly tight on their RP. This had one major problem though: bar none they were super exclusive, and had some of the worst reqs to full membership, only knight guilds had it harder, but they came with the sweet knight titles. 

This also affected class balancing, occies were broke strong, but the players in the guild were, for the most part, able to curb how many were running around. This neatly turns back around to the thread: factional classes add depth to the game without costing TOO much in mechanics, much like RPGs that force certain races to certain classes: it's constrictive but immersive. 

I think Hashan could do with a shade class that ashtan shares with, and make darkness/chaos a weird relationship were the other sort of agrees with the motions of the faction but not the end result of it. This would allow both cities to have the 2 factional class balance (loosis has 3 but foregos alchemists so balances out).

Vesios

I was surprised to learn depthswalker was a neutral class upon returning from dormancy, actually. When reading over the abilities I was definitely going "wow, Hashan finally got a factional class, neat!" Shadowmancy is about as Darkness-attuned as you can get. I realize there's all that lore regarding the Tsol'teth and de Sangre and yaddah yaddah, but still. 

Part of me is still waiting for Twilight to pull the "shadows are My domain!" card. 

Asmodron

Vesios said:

I was surprised to learn depthswalker was a neutral class upon returning from dormancy, actually. When reading over the abilities I was definitely going "wow, Hashan finally got a factional class, neat!" Shadowmancy is about as Darkness-attuned as you can get. I realize there's all that lore regarding the Tsol'teth and de Sangre and yaddah yaddah, but still. 

Part of me is still waiting for Twilight to pull the "shadows are My domain!" card. 

He technically did, in his own Twilight words.


Paraphrasing but he basically said "Shadows come from darkness. If a lit candle presents a shadow, do you recall Deucalion? Surely not".


He later said the skills themselves did not come from him, nor are linked to him akin to necromancy is to sartan, but in the end, darkness is darkness. Naturally we wont go around preaching to try and get people to ban it. It is open and people want to have their fun, and naturally can just state it is "tsol'teth magic, not Twilight's" which is true, he did not make the skills. It is pretty much a perfect example of Darkness faith "A skill that is and isnt of Twilight".

Asmodron

As for the Darkness faith and theme for Hashan, I can agree that perhaps a more aggressive worldly stance could be taken.


The main issue is the past conflict in Hashan with 'control' by divine. Conflicts in the past with so many orders that tried to take 'control' of Hashan definitely left a scar. A good amount of players in Hashan are there for the 'free choice' concept present, and are strongly against any forced alignment. This is a grandfathered concept from the days Hashan was without any real goal and most enjoyed living their own lives while being part of the husk that was the city back then. If you speak to politicians of the city, you will find some that love Darkness and would love to see the city embrace it whole, while others would be strongly against it and say "Hashan is not Dark aligned, nor will it be, we merely respect Twilight's presence and advice. We are a democractic nation of individuality and freedom of religion".


It would be one heck of a messy fight if Hashan was pushed full darkness, and I can see a lot of complaining and some people leaving. In fact...Hashan would likely go the route Ashtan did after the renaissance

Prythe

Vesios said:

Reminds me of one of the old Circle questions: "If Lady Gaia approached you and asked you to harm Nature in Her name, would you?"

The answer in this case was "no", because, at least in the Druids, we were taught that Nature was something separate than the Divine, and we were to love Nature above all else. 

This.

And I still practice that to this day, which is why when the trend came towards blurring then crossing that line I was "Uh, no."

Consistent RP / character more important to me than shifting sands of "Hmmm. We need a faction."

I had a faction.

I have a faction.

Nature.

I just nurture her from a different place and in a different way from what I did in my youth and the "faction" also defends / treats nature in a different way from how so many of us were taught in our youth.

Ginovianna

Come to dark side, we have cookies and spooky things. Did I mention cake too?

Asmodron

delicious black forest cake o.o

Bronislav

> Look at factional class discussion.
> See 2 whole pages devoted to Hashan.
> See 0 discussion on Cyrene.
> Bitch we neutral.

I never liked the whole 'neutrality' schtick that Cyrene has moved towards - not necessarily because it's a BAD thing, because neutral-good was always a complicated notion to elaborate upon (MORALLY good, but POLITICALLY neutral) so much as it takes a little more creativity to really hammer home in a way that's fun. I like to think that Cyrene is focused less on Creation and Good ever since Targossas' shenanigans and more upon integrity, honour, order, and law. Having that sort of regimented focus on maintaining the balance and focusing on justice (Are you there, @Daedalus? Are you there, @Miramar? It's me, Bronislav) seems like a great way to help flesh out Cyrene alongside the notions of industry and creativity that served as the natural backbone of the city's society. I guess this is a really long way of saying that we never needed factional classes to shape our culture, so yeah. We don't need no stinkin' faction classes (although it seems the unofficial one will always be Dragons. Go Team Blu!).

Rangor

Nazihk said:

Daeir said:
You mean like a military currently (or previously) warring with the Eleusians over the Darkenwood? A city that actively researches the relatively unknown force holding it several hundred feet off the ground? A city home to a pedigree of alchemists that have worked to understand the nature of the ether and how it might be best used to twist and alter reality?

The Darkenwood Conflict doesn't really count because Eleusis started it. All it really proves is that Hashan will fight back when somebody takes a swing at it.

The other stuff, that doesn't matter for this kind of thing. "We're super sciencey!" isn't a workable faction identity. You're sciencey. So what? What are you going to do with that knowledge once you get it? What are your goals? Who is going to try and stop you from doing it? Why are they opposed to it?

A good factional identity will have answers for all of those questions, and those answers will be easily accessible to a newbie within the 30 minutes of character creation. 

No, you started it. And the underlying conflict runs far deeper and for far longer. It's just that the current hashan playerbase wasn't there for the other centuries of nature vs twilight conflict.

Farrah

Ashtan is in some ways a good example of how you can have a more secretive, manipulative Order + a faction built around it.

You've got the city, allied with the Chaos Lords, and pledged to tear down all society and structure in the world so they can rise as Chaos Lords to rule it.

You have Nihilism, which fits in with this because it's basically all "don't worry about Chaos, just enjoy your life, claim what you can, and destroy."

Then, Nihilism is in some sense a front for the deeper Babel order ideology which is "Oblivion is the only perfect state of being. By bringing ruin to everything and heralding Chaos, we can arrive at this perfection faster," aka, we don't actually want to rule the world, we want to destroy it.