[Discuss] 2 Positions on same Continent

[Robert Croson, Jr]

On 3 Oct 2007 at 9:29, James wrote:

> The reason for the limit was originally because you'd have a ruler in 
> one realm, a judge in another, the ruler of that realm was the banker in 
> another, where the ruler had a character in another realm.  These realms 
> would all always be allied, and never even think about things being any 
> different.  These people would constantly do whatever they could to keep 
> the realms allied.  They had no IC reason for this, just OOC reasons of 
> not wanting to hurt the realm that they were in with another character.  

That's how I see it, too. Allowing multiple council positions in multiple realms 
will tend to lock the island up in a very tight power structure. The way realms 
work now, the larger the realm, the harder to control. This provides a good limit 
on how much of an island a single person can control. If a person could hold 
two council positions on a single island they could double the amount of regions 
that they personally control. With the control of two realms, working very tightly 
together without any fear of betrayal at all, they could have a very good chance 
of reachng that theoretical maximum size.

For example, take a realm that reaches a very large size, such as CE on 
Atamara. They hit, what, 32 regions? Enweil hit close to 30 on BT. So if you 
controlled two 30 region realms on the EC, you personally would control nearly 
half the island! On AT or BT that would be close to 1/3rd of the island.

The game is much more fun when there are a larger number of realms, all 
vying against each other. Lock too much of an island into a single, unbreakable 
power block and it gets *very* boring for everyone. Yes, the 7 or 8 people at 
the top might be having a lot of fun, but the 400-500 people underneath them 
are bored out of their skulls.

So, yes, it is an OOC rule that mkes no IC sense. Deal with it. There are a lot 
more islands than you can have characters. If you want all your characters to 
be rulers, then move each one to a different island.

And before you get started on the whole "I can separate my characters!" 
argument: I will grant that maybe you can do this. You would be, however, in 
the small fraction of a percent of BattleMaster players that could do so. The 
majority of BattleMaster players almost definitely could *not* adequately 
separate their players to the level required to make it work. And even then, 
there are certain things that no sane human could possibly do that would 
remove a large portion of the dynamic nature of the game. (Such as one 
character's betrayal of another at the exact key and cruicial time that would 
lead to the certain destruction of the other realm, or even provide them a 
significant setback.)

But yes, maybe you could separate enough to make it work, after a fashion. But 
all it takes is one person (or maybe two) who *can't* do that to ruin an entire 
island. And the people that *can't* do that are the exact type of people who 
would seek this type of power in the first place. The "risk vs. reward" ratio for 
this change is simple way too overbalanced on the side of "risk".


-- 
Rob

What you get when you squish an android:  Data compression.




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