Until Further Notice...

[magicaddict]

...and and all calls I make during TL Time In should be taken with a pinch of salt unless they can be immediately verified by the GM or battleboarder. I'm serious.

If last weekend was a bad day as far as roleplay was concerned, this weekend completed the duplex with a bad day for mechanics. This is not remotely the fault of GMs or other players - indeed, had I enacted what I was told to rather than what that which used to be my head for LARP came out with, I'm sure I would have had a better time. The vast majority of other people seemed to enjoy it.
There simply is no excuse for someone who's been playing the game for three and a half years making as many fundamental errors in game mechanics, safety and simple mathematics as I did on Sunday. Must do better.
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The game itself revolved around the eternal battle between chocolate and sugar. One one side, in the land of Berry, the party encountered the Cream of Society - Queen Berry and Princess Straw. They led the chocolates, aided by their bodyguard, Walnut Whip, and their slightly jumpy advisor, Flake. Wandering Minstrels pervaded the court, feeding the pet Mousse and making sure the captive Whine Gum didn't escape. What they didn't know was that the sugars had put a spy in their midst, in the form of a Kit Kat (mainly biscuit and sugar, but wearing a chocolate overcoat), sweet talking them with sugar-coated whispers.

Dispatched to retrieve the Easter Bunny, deluded into believing he was giving out chocolate eggs when in fact they were higly addictive sugar-coated chocolate eggs, the party had to follow the Milky Way and the directions of Moomar the Cow Druid and the Milky Bar kid, for whom only the best was good enough. Battling with their own increasingly debilltating sugar craving, they faced the full pick and mix of the sugars forces: Shock troops from the deep south (American Hard Gums), capricious mages (Caster Sugars), morale killing heralds (Wine Gums), stoic defenders (Gum Shields), wild animals (Gummy Croccodiles, Candyfloss Sheep and Gummy Bears), and seductive geometric objects (Sugar Cubes), all under the command of the evil Princes Tate and Tyle, running the show from the court of the Refined Sugars.

Much insanity ensued and the players won, as such. I got progressively worse throughout the day, the pinnacle coming after I had been asked to mind how hard I was hitting, when the joy at having landed an almost unanswered blow on Warren was rather offset by the fact that it was an unpulled fourpenny one right on the crown of his head. But anyway, see earlier for such whinging.
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Finally, the conversation in the pub afterwards led me on to thinking. I will make this point with the disclaimer that I have Guard Gerrard Knight statted, half backstoried and waiting to come out in October of 2009 or 2010.

The players were discussing how the party got fragmented quite a lot during the game, as they had shock troops and soft underbelly, but nothing defensive to rally to. They said they needed guards. I pointed out that general IC opinion tends against guards, with implications of incompetence, small-mindedness and wasting of space. I received confirmation that such feelings were only IC, and that, in fact, the abilities of guards were both appreciated and seen as useful.

However, if such feelings are pretty widely existant IC, and any guards coming into play will have a stigma attached to them that they will need to spend a couple of years overcoming before having a chance to be viewed on the same playing field as other characters, even other military characters, what on earth is the incentive to play one?

I have heard arguments about years in which there were very few military, and the party had to get by without them. I have heard arguments about there being a lot of powerful, capable pathfinders whose command ability and durability erodes the usefulness of guards. I have also heard arguments suggesting that there is nothing a guard can bring that a properly buffed different character cannot provide in spades. Are these enough to condemn all those potential new characters who would don armour, pick up a shield and take the Prince's Shilling to a lifetime of being ridiculed for stupidity, used as yardsticks to show how powerful your non-guard character is by beating them, and viewed with suspicion because back in your day you didn't exclusively need them?

As I have no illusions about how unpopular this opinion will be, let the flaming commence.

Comments

[drabbit.livejournal.com]

It appears that the core high level characters are mostly elves (of which most are mages of one form or another) and barbarians, so it sadly seems hard to produce a military heavy player group in order to have a military driven mission.

[same-difference.livejournal.com]

The one example I can think of was the Guards heavy mission for G'mord's short lived promotion. Though that did have a wide variety of characters of various ranks and a couple of NPC's too.

[duke-of-krondor.livejournal.com]

Well Chris' game allowed Eagleson to pick a party and ofcourse guards guards was an all guard mission. I consider anyone who signs up to barony patrols to be military, and despite not following defenders restrictions, should always obey orders or suffer the IC down side.

The problem is a lot of people don't listen to orders. To an extent people listen to Hel's orders because she has a lot of IC friends. She also relies on her closer friends, to an extent, representing smaller groups that can be independantly controlled. What it mainly comes down to is a form of inadvertant delegation. Eagleson attempts to control the party, where as Hel guides the more respected members.

From my perspective Nab has almost always followed orders, I can't think of a time he hasn't but there may be one. He has sworn to defend the barony from harm and to an extent both of us feel put down when it is said that it is not their concern because the is a highlander. I dislike this, but my ultimately stand by my belief that the system strives not to function as a cohereant party...due to highlanders hate mages, mages hate each other, priests hate those who don't agree with them (which to a certain extent is fanatsism but in an open pantheon system there probably should be more understanding), and the list continues. I'm always fearful of the day when I get told Nab is too elf friendly. He really isn't, he sees mages and non combatants as weaklings who are unable to defend themselves (which is the best case scenario really) yet no matter how many times he saves mages lives...and he has a fair few...he is still regarded as the big angry ball of rage because he's a highlander. Hmm unintenional rant on the last bit.

I agree with the skirmishing point. Guards should also be able to adapt to a skirmishing style since it rules about half the games we play. They are not a roman legion or rank fighters, but should be trained as such.

[drabbit.livejournal.com]

It's true, the system does build heroes, and heroes by their nature tend to work alone, although their work can coincide.

And believe me I know how many times Nab has saved mages lives - every time Adiuvo tries to turn an elf against you he comes up against the argument "but I've trusted him ever since he saved my life...". ;)

Guards should be able to adapt to the skirmishing style, yes - we could all probably do with putting our minds to tactics a bit more. We're pretty good at strategy within terms of character abilities, as that's basically twinking, however tactics in the moment are rarely given any consideration.

[magicaddict.livejournal.com]

I am interested in the responses this has brought about. Thank you to everyone taking part - considerably less flame grilling than BK would be happy with.

I agree with James that people may be more willing to follow Hel and Liana's orders because she delegates via mutual friends, in comparison to someone who tries to act as a lone commander (ideally, that won't sound offensive to what Ruth has achieved in doing so). Personally, none of my characters would say no to any of hers for fear of repercussions, be they real or imagined, from her or her network of friends. Perhaps this is not unwished for.
It is a method, however, that requires time to establish. What happened when the characters were new?

I also agree that when someone signs up to patrol they should behave as though they are in the military. I do, however, feel that this doesn't happen. Two examples that jump off the top of my head, with names removed to save guilty blushes:

Commander: "Character, come back here."
Character: "I'm scouting." *disappears off into distance*

Commander: "Are you going to follow orders?"
Character: "I'm not going to follow your orders."

Names available by email on request.

Perhaps doing what someone else wants them to do is not seen as fun, or a heroic thing to do. I don't, however, see any problems when it happens in the tabletop games I play. Possibly because this is due to it having happened organically rather than there having been someone designed to be in charge, and because it is the same people game in, game out. I do plan to play Gerrard in all the low level games I can when he comes out, so if he is put in charge, there may well be a regular commander that could establish familiarity and network with his party. But that's at least three years away, so is conjecture at the moment.

I don't like the concept of one-dimensional guards who order the party to form line every time a threat appears, and agree that someone with a handle on all kinds of fighting tactics will make a better all round commander. However, ironically, the one time I have seen line fighting consistently happen was on the first game I ever played, when we had four shields out of eight characters, and Blaine ordered a shield wall more often than not. The party cleaned house, time after time. Rare, but evidence that shield walls are not an entirely stupid idea.

Skirmishing as a guard is hard work, I'm sure. Picking where you can be most effective where the entire party is scattered over a wide area, those mages are running for their lives, that barbarian is holding off three people but is getting tired, and this marshal is back-footedly parrying like a bastard while that marshal is trying to pick up the scout that got caught with a lucky one, is going to prove difficult. Perhaps scouts aren't the only class who receive very little in-game help from their stats when it comes down to what is required of them.

I think there is definitely a stigma, and that it isn't helped by the current climate. Changing it will be a long and difficult task, and I am not sure why anyone would want to start knowing how long it will take. Maybe starting out with the idea of changing opinion isn't the right way to go - it's too much being a character for other people rather than one for yourself. Whether people are willing to ignore the snide remarks for long enough to establish themselves remains to be seen, but I don't think it is entirely fair for the stigma to be there on character day one, when possibly the player isn't aware of it's reasoning, or even its existence.

[same-difference.livejournal.com]

It's not simple. There are often very good reasons why characters don't respect the military command structure.

Some characters have to reject orders, freedom priests for example (though I'd note that Cumberland treats each order as a suggestion and evaluates it's merits on the basis the person giving it knows more about military matters that he does). It is assumed that the military have come to accept their presence for there usefulness. Think of it as the equivalent as hiring and incorporating native guides in a real world military endeavour. They won't fit into the military structure, but this is much less important in the face of the needed skills they bring.

However, a lot of characters particularly high level characters have learnt there disrespect for the military from experience. Sometimes that's incompetent players over the course of the first and generally very formative year of play - this year for example Linte has found that the non-guard warriors have generally been much more effective and intelligent and capable than the guard ones. However some of the Scouts and Wardens have been very good, so he's learning to follow people based on their capability not their rank. It's not quite 'all military are shit', but neither is it 'he's in charge so he should be listened to'.

The other cause is GM's and the world set up. If a party goes out with out a healer IC it's the Defender's poor planning, the military become responsible for factors outside of it's control. Then there is the fact that many games are based around an incompetent commander, partly because it's an effective plot device, and partly because it often explains why more isn't being done. Again because of the system the only defender in the party will be put in charge of a party, even if people know he's a really poor leader.

The Borderland's year is an excellent example of all of that. The Commander for the area is an idiot with a bought commission, this is to justify the strange mix of people in the patrols (like the chaos priest and the death priest). This was then coupled with a lack of guards and a set of fairly awful scouts. Leading those who came out of the year to if not just simply disrespect the military to at least have very low expectations and opinions of them. That year though the party had a clear leader, even followed orders, the leader though was a Justice Priestess, not any of the military. A lot of the characters can be swayed by a competent military mind, but they will be treated as an exception to the rule, until events prove otherwise.

[ruthste.livejournal.com]

I would tend to agree with same_difference that there are many reasons why characters do not respect the chain of command. I don't think it's a case of people not wanting to do what they're told on an OOC basis (and tbh, I would really hope that BLADES average member is more mature than that) nor do I think it's a question of heroics.

With regard to Hel (in particular) delegating more to close friends and small groups than acting as a lone commander then this /is/ her intention. The people she patrols with the vast majority of the time are people that she knows and she feels no need to patronise them by giving them orders for every little thing. This, in her opinion at least, should also mean that on the occasions she does give a direct and specific order others will realise that she is serious about it and should be obeyed since she doesn't waste their time telling them what they already know or to do what they would do anyway. Whether this would be a valid RL manner of command I don't know but it works in game.

Also, I would like to take up magicaddict's point that: when someone signs up to patrol they should behave as though they are in the military. I do, however, feel that this doesn't happen (BTW - although I can take a good guess at the people involved I would be interested in knowing who the examples referred to...) I can see that the way several characters (and Hel has done it too) listen to the official mission commander's orders and... creatively reinterpret them is possibly not what would happen in a RL military. However, often the military commander has been chosen for arbitary reasons and is rarely the person who is actually best at understanding the situation and giving the correct orders. In this sense many characters ignore orders given by their military superiors since the orders given are, frankly, rubbish. If your problems have arisen from this then nothing I say will be convincing since I do not believe that characters will, or necessarily even should, follow orders that they know are wrong. If the IC command structure was based on IC merit or competence rather than OOC rank I think things would be very different.

On an early mission in the 5 Mages year, Hel took command from Azrael mid-mission when Azrael had got himself stoned. On the most recent 36 hour, Hel broke the chain of command to give orders when it was clear that Fiddelo and Eagleson weren't going to.

I don't think that this is something that is always a bad thing. However, if a military character does ignore orders, refuses to accept orders (privately advising your superior that their orders are wrong and persuading them to change is a different matter) or gives their own contradictory orders then it is something that should be brought to the attention of the GM, campaign or character ref who can ensure that there are IC consequences.

This all comes back to my initial point - I do not believe that there is any IC stigma (nor can I see why there should be any OOC stigma) on playing a Guard at low-level. Each new year of characters start from scratch with minimal preconceptions about other characters from class or guild. It is then up to the players of individual Guards (and other Defenders to a lesser extent) to prove themselves. Unfortunately, year on year, we have seen players of Guards prove themselves to be incompetent leaders, poor tacticians, or get bored and quit playing. Once a character has proved to their peers (the other characters of their initial year) that they are competent and their orders can be relied on, those peers will help defence their reputation against others who dislike Guards or the military 'on principle' or on past experience.

I note this by personal experience. Hel doesn't like Justice priests - yet every time this has come up in general conversation someone has jumped to defend them using Liana as an example. Characters will go by their own experiences, not by what others tell them to expect.

[drabbit.livejournal.com]

I'd dispute that Freedom priests have to reject orders. This is a choice on the part of the player on how to interpret the alignment.

The actual Freedom Temple guild slant clearly prioritises freedom through awareness of knowledge and ability to choose. It doesn't preclude choosing to believe the Barony is an excellent structure for doing things and thus choosing to be part of the command structure, even when you don't understand the commands. You might break from orders at certain critical junctures ("burn the necromantic spell book" is one interesting crunch point), but for the most part you'd perform as part of the patrol.

[magicaddict.livejournal.com]

When Juilin was playing, he was of the opinion that if he had to do what he was told for one part of one day per week that he himself had signed up to be part of, it was hardly going to shatter his alignement.