Oh, that's dryh***ing a noble family, not what I meant. Specifically, I meant the tendency of Massivecraft's noble scene to proclaim public enemies seemingly randomly, and various families teaming up on them, even those families that are normally inactive, and even those families who would be rather obviously on the losing side if their target fell. To me, it always felt like the possibility of OOC antagonisation, toxicity or broken friendship is a much larger threat than anything that could happen IC to a character, and thus inconsistent / non-IC decisions will be made.
Two examples:
The team-up on Krupp led by Typhonus (which happened the day prior to the assembly outtake) in the military summit, after which Typhonus purged 90% of the military leadership that was present and teamed up on Krupp.
The team-up on d'Ortonnaise, after which Peirgartens were invaded and Howlesters would have been removed from nobility again, if not for the assembly rule change.
There's also the case of team-ups when the "good" side sees a chance to triumph, the chance to defeat someone or the chance to participate in a story. Take the recent Synod example.
All in all, people always chose, by default, the side that remained constant over the years over the side that was changing. Because, obviously, when one side seems to survive everything and their enemies destroyed and gang-teamed every other month, there is a heavy OOC drive to choose one over the other.
Mind, I used the words "concessions" and "motivations" in place of "enforcement" or "pressure". I lost belief in the ability to pressure, push or enforce matters since most players (including me) just leave and look for another platform if they are pressured or forced into matters they heavily disagree with.
I will ask this way, then: Do you agree or disagree with the statement that cultural depth, variety and attention to detail used to enrich noble roleplay?
I do think it was a great portion of the fun. Especially since culture-related fun is non-confrontational and does not usually lead to character rivalry / death / family elimination. But a lot of interactions still. How I miss those Devereux parties...
There is a great deal of "resources" you don't account for. Leadership over charters, organisations. Leadership in progressions. Imperial court positions. Leadership in the military. So to say, compare government and the infamous deep state. You can alter the system to allow for a freeflow government where newcomers can interact, but the "deep state" will be there and newcomers will have a very hard time securing any sense of accomplishment, influence or power. And as long as there is none, the big families will just toss smaller ones aside. And even if you toss newcomers into the system, the point I raised about clique RP means they may just end up having a position by name and no ability to influence, do stuff or even interact with the stuff they are supposed to interact with. That's what happened with the newborn miss_ortonnaise.
How do you ensure big families don't sideline, ignore or just shit on new families? They don't want to "accomplish" anything, they want to retain power. All they will want is vassals, and to keep low families vassals forever (thus sentencing them to the slow valor / heinrich / crawley / cauthin / cerdici / etc death).
I can tell, the healthiest noble political rivalry I ever had was against one of the closest MCRP OOC friends I had, which is good. However, I see you risk something here: it's either they will enter a clean and decent conflict, or they will avoid conflict to retain pristine OOC relations.
Exactly. But this also makes your job harder, because when one guy gets pissed off, he will echo it in the discord and will get the others pissed too, who will leave. This means that you won't be losing players, but whole player groups and cliques.
Interestingly, I saw DM Emperor far less active recently than in the past. To state, the most influential interventions post-screamer time seem to dwarf in the shadow of interventions you approved / roleplayed Baba-managed times. Elimination of families, fights on the streets, deep-growing corruption, these were all intervened against to keep up the strict up-nosed RP of nobility.
Heck, the Chancellor was punished in court for slapping a lady.
Even worse, I saw in recent times that the DM roles were far more political than game-mastery. The law-protection of Harhold, the trial against the Coens, the Synod-manipulation. These don't seem DM-y to me at all.
