Posted by Former Cabal Leader on October 04, 1999 at 21:49:47:
Maybe this is just my take on things, but more So I ask you to ask yourselves next time you Now, I don't mean to get off on a rant here, but I certainly understand the idea behind the cabal I at least am sick and tired of writing out full- What, then, should be done? I don't think cabals One cabal I would like to see radically restructured, The quid-pro-quo relationship between Perhaps then the leftover/additonal powers That's my two cents for the day.
and more it seems as if people aren't thinking
about what they want to roleplay, then picking
a cabal that fits that. Rather, it seems as if
all anyone ever thinks about are what cabals have
which powers, which cabal has greater numbers
and where the "skilled players" are.
contemplate playing a character.. is it because
you actually think you have an interesting
concept to roleplay? Or, is it because you think
you have a race/class/cabal/tattoo combination
that will let kill lots of people?
it seems to me that almost everyone is using the
latter reasoning, and that bothers me. This is
(or should be at least) a roleplaying game, which
just so happens to include playerkilling because
that is necessary and conducive to roleplaying,
NOT a playerkilling game wherein "roleplaying"
is simply an excuse to give powers to some people
and not others.
powers encouraging roleplay. It's a simple solution,
reward the behavior you want to see. However, these
days I don't really see the Cabals rewarding actual
roleplaying and innovation so much as they reward
the people like Arolin and Matraien, for example,
who roleplay only as much as they need to in order
to gain entrance into the cabals, and provide them
their rationale to kill if not everything that moves,
then nearly everything that moves. This, then, is
the "roleplaying" we see.
fledged character histories, for characters who know
their family's names, where they grew up, and the
experiences that made them who they were, and not simply
in the context of getting caballed or tattooed, but
because I want to have a feel for who the character
is, and why the character does what he or she does.
Why am I sick of it? Because I see people who
obviously spent a fraction of the time I did reaping
much the same rewards I do, because they met the
"minimum" standards. Elitist? Perhaps, but it's been
my experience that if you try and raise the overall
level of standards for anything, deserving people will
work harder to achieve it, and roleplaying is no
exception.
should be done away with entirely, they at least
add a certain element of ideological conflict to
the game which cannot be achieved via religions
alone (short of making all religions into de facto
and/or de jure cabals, along the lines of SCARAB).
However, something still should be done. My first
inclination, then, is to severely power down the
cabals. The simple fact of having friends who
will help you out (or at least aren't opposed to
you, in the case of some such as Empire or Entropy)
is a certain bonus. Troupe can likely be left alone,
its powers aren't of any real consequence.
or eliminated entirely, is Empire. Yes, there have
been many excellent roleplayers within Empire, such
as Istendil to name a prime example. But for every
Istendil or Llorenthos, there have been far, far too
many no-account killers who just use it as an excuse
to group up and run around killing with the aid of
help from their powers. Sure, those powers aren't
really much at lower levels, but even if one looks at
this as adding some element of roleplaying to people
who'd run around and kill even without a cabal, I then
ask, "why even legitimize it?". Empire below the
Sect Leader/Emperor level, in my experience, does *not*
in any way encourage roleplaying. I'd much rather
see Shadow come back, regardless of the Powers. Even
if people had trouble roleplaying a Shadow correctly,
they still had to *roleplay*. They also had to pass an
Imm-level induction to get in. Compare this to Empire.
Hell, even a mediocre to poor roleplayer can become a
Sect Leader if they are smart enough not to do a dumb
thing and get anathematized, and meanwhile kill enough
people to be considered a badass by the rest of Empire
and the current council. Empire, in my eyes, is far
worse than the other cabals, which as I have already
stated I believe to be problematic and in need of
adjustment. Just get rid of Empire, let SCARAB take up
the slack, or some such... but *don't* put in another
cabal just because the majority of players who had evil
characters acted like they wanted to run around killing
everything in large gangs, and kill everyone who wasn't
one of them. Shadow and Knight being replaced by the
Empire and Dawn are another topic, though, which I'll
bring up some other time.
roleplaying and cabal induction is just
completely out of balance. Either the
rewards for such minimal roleplaying need
to go down, or the standards for real powers
need to be raised. Overall, my opinion is
to reduce the powers of all the cabals
(excluding Troupe, if you consider them a full
cabal), and perhaps even remove Empire, or
at least radically change it so that *some*
roleplaying is required (at all levels).
could granted to the cabal's leader(s), and/or
as special rewards for quests and such, or
other truly unique and original roleplaying,
to members of that Cabal.