Pantheon - Discussions on the Future

[Fist and Faith]

I really like the idea of no Divine Right, and less power in general. I didn't feel confined and weak in P1, and I like Aesir's power levels. (Not sure the players do, but them's the breaks. ) Mythologies usually have some world-ending event, like Ragnarok, but they're not usually the result of a single deity throwing around extreme power. They gather the other baddies together, and do this or that.

As for the P4 pantheons, I could be neutral, and still trade favors with others, regardless of whether or not they're in a pantheon. Just not trade power. Right? I mean, there's no saying we're unable to cooperate. I'll make a tornado take the sand out of your desert, so you can get to the ruins underneath it; you give my fishing boats great success this season.

[Madadeva]

... tidal wave sent by the god of 'being pissed off' will destroy everything...

GREAT GOD!!! Can I have the 'being pissed off' domain in P4?!!! PLEEEEEAAASSEEEE!!!!

[Dorian]

I do feel that the mortal side is often under-represented. I have tried my hardest to make sure my own playing is more follower based than god based.

[Menolly]

Pam, I'm unsure yet as to how to proceed with the smaller forums. I'd rather keep everything on the site, so people don't have to go sift through various hosts, but it really depends on how volatile these Pantheons will be - I wouldn't want to ask the admins to make and delete pantheon subforums every week

Well of course, with Av as admin, maybe that would be more doable, but still

mmm...
If there is away to guarantee one's spot among P4s 12 players, it sounds like becoming an Admin is the way to go...

[Fist and Faith]

Well, I had a dream. I had the coolest idea for P4. Alas, Xar shot it down. I don't remotely blame him, considering what I was gonna do. But since I won't be doing it, I figured I'd tell you about it. This is the PM I sent to Xar...

TIME

Here's my plan.

1) For several turns, make several posts that make absolutely no sense. No communication with me seems possible, because I speak gibberish.

2) When powerful enough, and after having laid a bunch of groundwork, I'll reset the whole world, back to the beginning of the game.

3) Now I'll post normal conversations, pointing out how my previous nonsensical posts actually do make sense, now that the events they were describing have come about.

4) Explain that they all WERE operating under a very limiited understanding of Time, making it impossible for them to communicate with a being like me, who operates on a mich higher level. When I reset Time, I gave them a truer understanding of Time's cyclic nature. Now, they are like me. Causes may follow effect, because such concepts are meaningless. They may THINK I have begun speaking comprehensibly, like them. But, in fact, it is THEY who have changed. They are now operating outside of the primitive laws of linear Time, so they are able to make sense of it. As I always could.

Obviously, nothing will have actually happened to their perceptions or anything. It's just the way I'm presenting my character, and Time in general. We'll all be back to square one, but lessons can be learned from mistakes that were made, and I'll have had a LOT of fun!!!

Also, I know I'll never have anywhere near the amount of power to cast a Reset spell in a single turn. I would do it by using a single DRP in many successive turns, "slowly entangling my fingers in the threads of Time. Getting a firm grasp of the whole cloth." Until such a time that whatever amount of DRPs I have is sufficient to Reset.

What do you think?? Come on, this would be awesome!! My first post would be something crazy like:

Forgive me. I could not think of an easier way to communicate with you.

And I'd say the exact same thing as soon as the Reset results came out.

Also, I'd say: "Unkind. Very unkind." after results for Turn 3, when nothing in particular happened. After the Reset, I'd explain it as a reaction to something nasty that we were all aware of happening in Turn 10, or whatever.

Get the idea?

[Goatkiller666]

Yeah, I dunno, Fist. I mean, it sounds awesome when you condense it down for us in a single post. But... if you're saying that you'd basically go 10 turns or more before you reset it... and that you'd be incomprehensible until then... you're a better gamer than I am, if you can forego all the personal interaction of a game for 10 turns (which could be like a year of our time) just so you can do the character justice.

[edit] - Also, I think it would be PRETTY easy to get a coalition together to wipe you out of the game, if you were to reset us all back to turn 1, after we'd built up 10 turns worth of stuff.

[Fist and Faith]

Yeah, I dunno, Fist. I mean, it sounds awesome when you condense it down for us in a single post. But... if you're saying that you'd basically go 10 turns or more before you reset it... and that you'd be incomprehensible until then... you're a better gamer than I am, if you can forego all the personal interaction of a game for 10 turns (which could be like a year of our time) just so you can do the character justice.

That would, indeed, be the plan. Of course, OOC, I'd say my character seems unable to communicate, and everybody will just have to wait and see if he can fix things.

[edit] - Also, I think it would be PRETTY easy to get a coalition together to wipe you out of the game, if you were to reset us all back to turn 1, after we'd built up 10 turns worth of stuff.

This was Xar's reason for saying No. Of course, I could immediately RE-reset it. My goal was not domination or anything at all nasty. It was just my way of getting us all able to communicate, so I wouldn't have a problem getting back to where we were.

Ah well... *sigh*

[I'm Murrin]

It would be interesting, at least. Everyone finds themselves back at turn one, they make a new set of orders in reaction to it, send them off, and then you fast forward again... Xar could have had some fun with the results of those particular orders.

Though I can see the problem with actually pulling it off, heh.

[Arcadia]

It would have been kinda cool in other ways, though. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've tried something that just didn't work or things I should have developed more and didn't but I only realize it after time. It would have been cool to have been able to go back and replay certain instances.

It would be like starting a new game over and over again.

[Goatkiller666]

So, seen from Xar's point of view, he has to keep EVERY detail of every turn result, and notes as to why he did something, so that when Zephyr, Jr. resets time back to turn 1 just to change one thing... he doesn't have to completely redo all his work.

I can see why he shot you down, Fist. That'd be horrible.

[Menolly]

So, seen from Xar's point of view, he has to keep EVERY detail of every turn result, and notes as to why he did something, so that when Zephyr, Jr. resets time back to turn 1 just to change one thing... he doesn't have to completely redo all his work.

uhm...
from what I've seen, I'm pretty sure this is the case anyway, all the way back to the First Age
I'm not 100% positive, but pretty sure...

as Fist said when we met Xar in Manhattan, (man, was that nearly a year ago???) it sure would have been nice to get a hold of his laptop, except he told us he didn't bring it with him.
(suuuuurrrreeee)

[Avatar]

In a way, I'm trying to reach a compromise between those players who want to build their religion without worrying that a tidal wave sent by the god of being pissed off will destroy everything, and those who can't wait to get political and to start playing religious wars with others.

I like that.

--A

[Fist and Faith]

So, seen from Xar's point of view, he has to keep EVERY detail of every turn result, and notes as to why he did something, so that when Zephyr, Jr. resets time back to turn 1 just to change one thing... he doesn't have to completely redo all his work.

I can see why he shot you down, Fist. That'd be horrible.

Sheesh, you're making it much more difficult than I was! No, in, say, Turn 10, I'd just turn the world back to the beginning of the game. Then, I'd turn it right back to Turn 10 again. Everything is just the way it was.

[Xar]

I've been considering how to keep track of how many influence tokens from which deity are in each city... I'd rather avoid doing it in writing: it's tedious for me to edit every time, and for players to read.

One possibility that I came up with was to have a graphical representation on the world map - replacing the "colored dot system" used in P2 and P3 to determine which god owned the city. While this might be a bit difficult to read for a few players, the world map itself will not be as large as P3 and the zoom function of any image-viewing software (including the preview function in Windows) would allow those players to look more carefully at the influence situation of given cities.

That said, I've been trying to experiment to see which graphical representation would be best to use, and I'd like your input.

In the picture shown here, you can see four different possibilities to represent the fact that in those cities, the red deity has 3 tokens; the green deity has 2; and the yellow deity has 4.

Which method do you think would be best, if any? As an alternative, what method would you suggest to keep track of Influence changes?

(Obviously even if we go for the graphical method, if a player wants to take the time to make a list of cities and who has influence where... that would be more than welcome).

[I'm Murrin]

I kinda like Enytha, though it might become hard to count. But they all seem to mean a city taking up more space on the map than they currently do.

Edit: How will this look, though, if we have the maximum number of players and they all manage to get a foot into the same city? It could get a bit crowded.

[Xar]

I kinda like Enytha, though it might become hard to count. But they all seem to mean a city taking up more space on the map than they currently do.

Edit: How will this look, though, if we have the maximum number of players and they all manage to get a fott into a city? It could get a bit crowded.

Well, yes, they all mean that a city will take more space on the map than they currently do. Ideally however, the game world will be a bit smaller than P3 and there won't be an exponential growth in number of cities, so the likelihood of these tokens overshadowing another city is slim at best.

I thought about sending the map via e-mail, as an attachment - in this way it could be a photoshop file so you could remove the "tokens" layer to see the physical map - but I'd rather avoid it, especially because some players might not have photoshop or not know how to use it properly.

The maximum number of players in a city will be 10 - given that each token represents 10% of the population; but I suspect it may be unlikely that the situation you describe will happen, because you won't have many tokens and you won't be able to move them about freely, so investing a token in a city where two or three deities already have a foothold would be counterproductive because you'd never gain as much influence as you would in a mostly empty city.

I suspect that the tokens system would lead some players to build up alliances to "split" a city between them instead of going there alone and hoping no one else comes in before you consolidate your power...

[I'm Murrin]

Personally, the one or two times I tried photoshop I couldn't work out what I was doing at all, and I don't have or plan to get the program.

[Menolly]

Of the four, I prefer Enytha as well.

[Arcadia]

Actually, I prefer Noruk. I like being able to count how many each has.

[Menolly]

I felt I could count each of the stacked coins in Enytha.
And my eyes are bad...

...but then, I do also have an older version of photoshop.