Q1 2019 Roleplay Direction Planning

A thread to close the year of 2018, and to look forward in some potential changes coming in 2019 following the summer updates of 2018. Massive continually needs to evolve to accommodate both new players, but also a player base that is maturing and does not see our roleplay as strictly stratified as in the past. There is a lot of flexibility as the player base and the target groups of our community grow older, but also a need for deeper lore to dive into, because while the current lore is expansive, there's always that "something" about a specific culture or race that makes someone not want to play them. This announcement outlines in short the gist of the planning for the first 3 months of 2019, which can bleed into other periods, but should all go "online" rather quickly.

Ailor electric Boogaloo
So with the removal of some fantasy races, the playerbase has generally understood at this point that this is an Ailor story crafted by an Ailor Empire. While it certainly remains true that many non Ailor races continue to exist just fine (and in many ways more powerful than the vanilla Ailor who have in fact no racial bonuses or powers), variety in Ailor culture should be as expansive as the real world. Aloria has about as many cultures as there are cultural differences within the spectrum of say, Bosnian mountains, where every valley has a different dialect, traditional value and view on the world. While there are obviously cultural connections there, the point is that the Ailor cultural spectrum is very limited as it stands. We currently have this list provided with an image.

Spoiler: List of Cultures

Marked in Green (formal cultures):

• England with it's Anglo-Saxon/Medieval English Anglian and Ceardian cultures
• Ireland and Scotland with it's Iriu and Highlander cultures
• Morocco and Mali laying the basis for Qadir
• Andalusia laying the basis for Daendroque (albeit with Caribbean influences)
• Francien from France in its Ithanian base (albeit grandly exaggerated)
• Dutch from the Lowland basis that contributes to Anglian
• Bavaria and Austria that make up much of the Alt Regalian culture
• Hellas providing our Etosian input
• Russia with its Mirnoye and Vladno people
• Norway with the Velheimer community
• Holstein/South Denmark with the Holzskaggers
• Muscat/Oman contributing to the Qadir culture

Marked in Orange (informal cultures):

• Some provision is provided for a Portuguese culture in Bragacao and Lusits but it is rarely ever officialized. Plans are to expand this into a formal sister culture of Daendroque.
• Danish/Danzig regions are provided for in some limited expansion of the Velheimer culture, but it's rarely ever expanded upon. Plans are to expand this into a formal sister culture of Velheimer.

Marked in Yellow (lip service cultures):

• The Finnish and Estonian based Sudemo/Tarkkin cultures had occasionally been mentioned in lore in the past, but were removed. These will return as a variety of tribal steppe nomad Velheimers (because actual velheimers live in a feudal society) as well as forest dwelling reindeer pasturals from the throat cap mountains of Drixagh in the Sudemo, reflecting Finnish.
• The Burgundian culture has been paid lip service to in the Champagnard Ithanian culture, but it was never formally implemented. These will return as a more normalized francard Ithanian culture with less focus on the elaborate artsy fartsy and more on the lavish wine and cheese producing countryside of Rivellia
• Hungarian culture has been paid lip service through the noble family Szekeshy and the Tirgunn lands, but they were removed in subsequent Noble reforms. We intend to bring them back to grand Ailor a kind of "horselord" Cuman inspired culture based on an invasion tale of the South Dukelands, which is a land mass new in the Regalian Archipelago.

Marked in Purple (new planned cultures):

• Breizh had been mentioned a few times in the lore, but was cut short very quickly. This is planned to return as a new bridge culture between Ithanian and Ceardian with a heavy emphasis on Norman military culture and post Viking settlement Christianization.
• Basque (not actual name) would be an entirely new culture, focused more on a more strictly religious but also very rural approach of Daendroque, while taking heavy influences from real life Basque and Catalan cultures.
• An Occitan/Provencal based maritime culture for Ithanian should be implemented also, to bridge the gap between Lusits and Ithania and Daendroc, forming an island chain with a heavy emphasis on trade.
• A Swiss/Tyrollean high mountain German culture of strict religious observation and yodeling. Lots and lots of yodeling and snow.
• A South Italian, mixing Neapolitan and Sicilian aspects into its own Dressolini sub culture to give a more laxe and relaxed feel to the otherwise civilized and arrogant Dressolini. (Yes @La_Dybala I'm looking forward to asking you to co-write this with me)
• A Bulgarian culture that implements a more pro-gender equality version of the very polarized vladno, with a heavier emphasis on rural conditions and some Romanian elements.
• A Turkish culture with heavy emphasis on the Ottoman Empire, part of the Ailor spectrum and occupying a large part of the Sendrassian landmass.
• An old Polish/Lithuanian culture with an emphasis on pre-christian paganism, wars against the Teutonic inspired Calembergers, with a whole new religion based on Greek Titans and Olympians but given a Baltic theme.
• An even more formalized Velheimer sister culture from the Swedish Heartland with a super heavy noble oligarchic feel, tons and tons of castles and feuds between barons and counts, but with a heavy civilized Scandinavian feel to it.
• Icelandic as a new Velheimer sister culture based on pasturalism and pacifism, taking the old Hurr Viking in a whole different more artsy and communal direction.
• North German, creating an Alt-Regalian sister culture that is far less military oriented and favors more the Hanseatic culture of trade and making one's own fortunes in the many viscounties of south Calemberg that are often overshadowed by the Arch-duchy.
• Libyan/Mameluk inspired war-like subculture of Qadir that is supposed to take the traditional pacifist and educated Qadir in the more aggressive direction of the Libyan warlords and tribe conflicts.
• Judaism inspired culture who discovered a sacred god-like being in the east of Sendras, forming a whole isolated culture away from the general Ceardian development.
• Armenian/Georgian representation as a sister bridge between Etosian and Vladno with a much heavier emphasis on holy wars, crusading, and monasteries united under a canonized king.
• Astrakhani/Tengri/Hunnic culture to represent a more tribal nomadic existence for Ailor who moved into the Hortutor lands in Daendroc to emulate the Avanthar horse steppe aesthetic.
• An Ethiopian/Coptic inspired sub-cult of Unionism among the Songaskians of Hadravia who will be like the "Regalian Accepted Songaskians" (but obviously still derive some stigma), but also taking lots of inspiration and themes from the Roman period Aksum and Solomonic Dynasty of Ethiopia.
• A Persian inspired sub culture of Qadir that is supposed to formalize a continuation of the Sariyd Empire that predated the Qadir being ousted from their lands by the Songaskians, inhabiting some of the old Pearl cities and being in a perpetual conflict with the Songaskians, with Babylonian and old Seleucid influences.

These mostly cover expansions to the Ailor/Songaskian/Qadir races. We believe that the other races should remain culturally homogeneous because it is advantageous for their smaller communities to be more closely knit, than to have the cultural oppositions that exist among Ailor drive them apart. Furthermore, this is a large expansion, it stands to double the amount of Ailor cultures. If anyone is from these particular lands or is for example a major Seleucid Empire history buff, our staff would love to co-author or even let players write out the cultures under Lore staff supervision. Ultimately, our Ailor Culture lore should be applicable to everyone, and not become a situation of "oh I'll just pick Ithanian because it's the closest to French, but I don't like XYZ about it but I guess I have to make do". Some of these cultures will receive a very bare bones culture page very soon with minimal info, with means to expand at a later time when another Lore Staff or player steps forward with the will to expand it. This will not be so much a revision, it will be a content expansion. All existing cultures remain where they are.

Progressing the World
Primarily, the Lore Staff have sort of agreed during a meeting that progressions related to magic and other high-fantasy elements are done, probably indefinitely. We no longer want magical events or supernatural events to dictate the world's direction, as the world has already been pummeled enough with magical events. Now is a time for men made by men with men based problems, politics, wars, scheming, and the like. Our primary progression plan in Regalia as such is to maintain the Archipelago as the source of strife. This is fancy wording for "We're going to drive nobles into conflict with one another and use trickle down roleplay to include others". But worry not! Many characters are extremely not interested in noble issues, and some players LOVE the magical elements of Massive. We however feel that Magical progressions should remain part of smaller groups. For example, there is a demon/god/baby hunt going on in select circles like the magically inclined Silven and Kathar, but it's not being advertised as a global event that affects the world or everyone in Regalia, in fact most players don't even know about it. That is what is our intended future policy. Down to earth non-magical progression events involving wars and conflicts either on a state or global scale, but still having micro magical progressions for the magical communities in a way that they don't get in the way of the main progressions, or even exist on an under layer to the point where those dealing with for example a mad king invading never even get to see them. This will also not affect Storywebs which will remain in place and go in full drive after the new year when (I personally) am no longer on sick leave).

Small Proficiency Update
Some months/year after implementation, the Proficiency update still holds very strong. We want to do another run over the Bodily limitations of the various races however, expanding some where they make sense and loosening some where they do not. We also want to take a hard look at a couple of proficiency to maybe split them apart if we feel they are too many, and add a few proficiency to allow for in-game weighed rolls on actions that are normally left up to chance. This will not be so much a revision, it will be a content expansion.

Parlor Magic & The Magics
Parlor Magic is nearly completing its final internal stages after which we open it up for common review. When Parlor Magic comes out, we need to off balance the exceptionalism of Mages however. This will mean that all Mages will likely receive a utility boost in their magic, primarily because we don't want to create a situation where a Parlor Mage (who in line with our more low-fantasy drive will sometimes be seen as a Parlor Alchemist) has more spells than an actual mage, who is supposed to be born with a magical gift (or curse, depending on how you look at it).

Races and Racing
Races remain where they are. We're very happy about the current setup of things, the only races causing mild discomfort being the Maraya. There are imminent plans to revive them with a whole new sub-plot, backstory and setup to rid them of the honestly dragging insectoid history, it causes a lot of issues, but we still firmly believe they are important to Allor and Ailor history. Aside from this, we still have the Dragon-Elves in the planning at some point, but currently we feel that there isn't enough players to support another race being implemented without it creating a dead status quo population, so this is on hold until we think there are enough players to sustain a population. Finally, the Sihai Lore will finally be written out in full soon. After a long time of internal paralysis because we feared delivering a product not up to scratch with those who wanted to see more fair representation of Asian culture and eastern history, we've just decided to do what we can do and forgo any hopes of delivering a piece of perfection. So that should come out soon-ish.

Techlock Techblock
Technology on Massive has always been super Stagnant. For a long period of time we've resisted any sort of technological progression push. We're cautiously trying to allow Archaeology based story webs to uncover the means to propel the Regalian Empire into a new age of development as it were. Far from producing a steampunk universe, we simply want to cautiously flirt with more creative siege engines, as well as some limited fire-arm implementation reminiscing of the earliest Arquebus/Fireworks implementation. It's important to note that we want to keep the strong Melee combat based presence however. Any tech advancement will not go at the expense of existing lore constructs about combat and such. There will never be a Fusilier style execution squad of Guards running around. Any tech advances will most likely occur on the progression/forum update level, and within limited scope during events and very specific characters.

Noblesse, ma Noblesse
Nobility is at an all-time low again, and this is largely to blame due to the extreme stagnancy of politics. The Noble Assembly is once more on the way out. Instead, we're going to be playing with something we've never tried before: A privy cabinet assembly on a weekly basis where the Counts (new level) and Dukes get to propose to the Emperor directly and debate their case against only one opponent or just the Emperor's skepticism. The idea here is that convincing one person to agree is easier than convincing 20 people to vote in favor who just don't care. We also want to speed ahead formal court protocol and behavior, and thus set the tone for Imperial Favoritism, more Imperial styled events and actual court roleplay. We want to make the Imperial Court a go-to place for anyone who wants to do Noble Rp, or their servants/saboteurs who want to one-up the other families in an ever evolving game of court intrigue. Less about stabbing people, more about making a fool out of others, or becoming the favorite of the court as one of the Emperor's most devout and loyal subjects. The Court write-up will be released soon, as well as the Government reform. There will still be space for Altalar/Dwarven/Cro-Allar Nobility, and we're also making Cro-Allar a special permission, not a Noble Application form.

Other Minor Things

• Witchblood Rework to put it up to date with the Muters of other things.
• Minor revision of the Half-Races to create more clear distinctions between a Half-Human with Orc parents and a Half-Orc with Human parents.
• More anti Magic and Magic crushing means