Niryain,Sep 6 2015 wrote: And the factions that can't actively recruit? The Dustmen, Bleakers, (Maybe) Indeps of the world? They're to wallow until enough people simultaneously decide to be a part of that faction so as to demand attention?
Not at all. Just because a faction doesn't promote recruitment runs doesn't mean they don't talk about what they believe and do interesting things. Involving other people in your PC's projects can be a sneaky way to "recruit" them.
And yes, your point about us trying to be three different things is entirely true. We're trying to work on making it more RP and Faction friendly, but it takes a long time to paint over the action-focused-ness that's stamped all over the server.
Maybe there will be cool Signer things waiting for you if you come back.
What it really comes down to is that people have to WANT to play a faction for it to succeed. And yes, obviously people are going to gravitate to the factions that are "easier" to play, where you can just play your character in whatever concept you like and simply say "woohoo, I'm in a faction!" (i.e., the ones that feel more like guilds and less like philosophical outlooks).
Now I'm the first to admit, factions aren't for everybody. The only character I had who joined a faction did so organically as a result of RP; she wasn't built to be the member of any faction, but certain things that happenned to her led to her joining the Sensates (at a time when there were none, this was in 2011).
But on the other hand, there's no rule saying that you have to utterly devote your being to that faction. Sure, the Dustmen aren't going to have members who are happy-go-lucky NG priests of the god of light and love, but not everybody needs to be a lich either. One of the best actual instances I've seen of someone playing a member of a faction was Amir, a Bleaker who was amazingly bleak, acerbic, and nihilistic... oh, also somehow managed to have dozens of friends despite it, even though at the time he was the only person playing a member of the Bleak Cabal.
And some of that is going to come from being OOC social. The majority of players here play at least one and in some cases dozens of alts, and a lot of those alts came about because someone else said "hey, we should play together as members of an orc clan".... if that can work (and it did for a while), the same thing could be done with the Athar, the Transcendent Order, or other less "popular" factions. And then suddenly not only do you have someone or someones to interact with on faction issues, but you've also got a group that can expect DM attention instead of having to "beg" for it.
Ceremorph,Sep 6 2015 wrote: And then suddenly not only do you have someone or someones to interact with on faction issues, but you've also got a group that can expect DM attention instead of having to "beg" for it.
That's also a two sided sword. You can't expect people to become/stay devoted to an idea or concept if no one's going to pay attention to it; we even had multiple Fated and Ciphers at one point, but roughly all the events were still hogged by the Triad, as per usual :P
But then again, EM/DM is volunteer work, so you can't expect people to pay attention to a faction that probably they themselves don't fully comprehend... just feels a tad bad when you're not part of the Triad and all you see is them saving the world day by day, whilst you are looking for a philosophical (or physical?) Source or are trying to make people realize that your choice of playing a Fated wasn't a stupid one.
What's stupid about being a Fated! You can tax people. Metaphorically. Because no gold actually changes hands. God forbid the successful merchants register/pay taxes/whatever. Literally the entire function of the faction in the city reduced to an RP quirk that people are free to ignore because the Harmonium are also toothless!
But yes I'm inclined to agree. It seems easier to formulate general events about 'bad people are doing bad things' instead of 'let us advance a vague philosophic ideal that applies to only us and is kind of hard to fathom'. Which would lead to Law getting a lot of proportional action. Most server plotlines involve Bad Things happening. Bad Things are generally destabilizing. Law is an active, militaristic (Or legalistic if we look at Guvner but they're proportionally the least represented of Law I think) triad. Thus their nose will invariably stick in and they'll hit things with law sticks. So it goes.
High rank Signers? They sit in think tanks and think. All day. Think events into creation. Exciting stuff for PW RP, that. Gather enough and they could god mod all day! The end goal of a good Signer is to.. Not have to.. Do anything. Ever.
DigitalDragoon,Sep 6 2015 wrote: For the complaint about the number of sensates..We were actually fairly few in number until about mid-july. We just remained active and tried to recruit, eventually it paid off.
So you're basically saying that everyone should be extremely aggressive with recruitment so they have a chance to get some attention ?
I don't think that's what they're saying. The only reason it comes off that way is because there are a handful more Sensate players (granted with a relatively small community just having a couple is still a pretty significant amount of the active population) and they've been attempting to recruit people. That's it. It's not aggressive recruitment, it's just recruitment. Having an ingame presence that people actually like is always going to interest more people and it just snowballs from there into extra activity for the faction.
The most efficient method of getting DM/EM attention is always going to be throwing out plot hooks. Give them something to work off and you can move on from there into Fun Stuff either on the forums or ingame. Otherwise, you're always going to be reliant on whatever they happen to feel like doing (hint: it probably isn't something involving the Revolutionary League or Xaos because they haven't had a post in their factional forums in two-three months) at the time.
Good luck to you, i hope you find someplace to have fun!.
As a side note DM's and EM's set the stage but its up to the players to write the story, If you want an event for a faction you have to be willing to push it forward. The larger factions get more attention as there is more players doing so. Message an EM from the public listing with an idea or request and typically one will accept it, so long as its not just about you or some reward.
Nerull,Sep 6 2015 wrote: Wait, Fated dont actually take gold for taxes? Lol. :blink:
You have merchants who are millionaires, take gold from them. :lol:
They made a thread about Takers being evil for taxing 100 gold. Take a guess how well it will go :P
Carebears :P
Carebears yes. Sigil is supposed to be a very dangerous city for the clueless, but honestly the cage looks more like a nice donut, you can play whatever you want without having even a faint chance to be disturbed or bullied by anything or face any consequences and that's quite immersion breaking at times.
Perhaps I misunderstand you, but I think "bullying" players for their choice of character isn't a direction we really want to go in.
You'd get "bullied" on a Faerun server if you showed up as a Red Wizard with slaves in Neverwinter, or as a priest of Tyr in Luskan...
Its not bullying, its simple consequences that help make a setting feel real with palpable conflicts and differences... but admittedly, its hard to implement such in a sparsely populated city. :-/
