Created 364 days ago
by
HfxTenor
Gamer, Singer, Trainer, Storyteller, and all-around swell cat.
Been playing WoD since the original VtM came out back in 1991, though I've been into RPG's since the D&D red-box in Grade 6.
First book I ever read: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (I have the hots for sinister female leads thanks to this novel)
Favourite Movie: The Sound of Music
Favourite Computer Game: Any adventure game by Sierra On-Line, particularly the Gabriel Knight series.
Merit: 3 Flaw: 0
Accounting
Gameplay
Masquerade
mechanics
MMO
Roleplay
Tradition
WoD
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World of Darkness Blog
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This kinda feels like Part 2 of my last blog, in which I discussed the third Tradition – Progeny. If they plan to implement it somehow, Accounting will definitely lead the developers toward some intriguing decisions. Something tells me, however, that this will be another one of those “Let’s leave this up to the players to police themselves” type of deals.
When I kick rhymes, there’s sumthin said to do damage...so let’s talk about My Definition, and my definition is this (bonus XP to those who can spot both my Canadian references there): The Tradition of Accounting states that, until a fledgling vampire is released by their Sire, the Sire is responsible for the education and actions of their childer.
Simply stated – until the Sire announces to the Kindred community that they have officially deemed their childe to be ready to stand on their own two feet (or four in the case of Gangrels.....sorry – that’s a cheap shot), they will be held as responsible as the childe for any of the childe’s fuck-ups. It’s the Kindred way of enforcing good parenting.
Can this work from the perspective of game mechanics in an MMO? Unfortunately, I’m having a hard time coming up with valid ideas. Everything always boils back down to – this is an RP-specific Tradition – let the players try to police it themselves.
First of all, what kind of mechanic would be needed for a Sire to make an announcement to their city/community? Normally, this would be accomplished through word-of-mouth – aka roleplay at Elysium with as many Harpies/Elders/Primogen/Prince present as possible. Maybe an automated bulletin-board to which all Kindred have access? Or would that take too much power out of the Harpies’ hands?
There’s always the global Kindred chat channel idea, but that kind of immersion breaking just makes the roleplayer in me want to wretch.
Next we’d need to consider how to implement ramifications for said fuck-ups. How would the “powers that be” even know an infraction had occurred? This goes back to the “How will Masquerade breaches be discovered/reported?” discussion. “How will childe-fuckups be discovered/reported?” Again – nearly impossible from a game-mechanics perspective. In addition to an automatic Masquerade Counter, we’d need an automatic Breach of Etiquette Counter as well.
Then we’d need to figure out how to mete out justice for the offence. That’s actually the easy part. Once a Prince/Primogen is made aware of the infraction, they can have the Sheriff deliver appropriate punishment, or allow the Primogen of the respective clan to handle it themselves.
I’m mostly really hoping this Tradition gets implemented in some manner or another for one reason – just like Masquerade, it’s the perfect way to handle MMO trolls and griefers. In my Masquerade blog, Morpheus made the excellent suggestion of having a game mechanic that allows us to know the identity of any given Kindred’s sire, and then have the sire suffer punishment for the actions of their childer. Embrace a troll, suffer the consequences – maybe you are banned from any further Embrace for a period of time, maybe permanently? Violate the ban and suffer banishment from the city or even a blood hunt.
For this reason alone, I really hope CCP comes up with some small modicum of game mechanic for monitoring and reporting violations. Pretty please, CCP?
6 Comments
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0 Merits
Shasta
353 days ago
I'll be very interested to see how this one does play in the game.. especially if, as seems to be the consensus of opinion, we will have primarily players siring players. I'd be very leery of embracing anyone I didn't know IRL or well from the forums - meta-gamey of me I know, but the risks are pretty severe if you embrace someone, and they violate one of the other Traditions before you can release them, then the blood hunt, game mechanically speaking, should automatically apply to both the sire and childe. The chance of someone else putting you "out of sanction" is one hell of a risk.
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1 Merits
Malena
363 days ago
Good to see your url fixed. I think that enforcing that tradition should work just as it works in the kindred society - temporary. The first period of being embraced should be temporal, with access to some functions (+ new options or new screen look or whatever) limited by that first stage. After positively ending that 'tutorial' of being a kindred, what seems to be fine when mentored by the sire - the player should have abilities to both mechanically and psychically start his own life in the game, he would know then how to be kindred, how and where to feed, what are the best tricks to avoid breaking the masquerade or what you can do to gain influences. All that things that are known so far by more experienced players should be shared IC, not only in relevant topics like 'Feeding - I left the body in the bar - what now???' at the game forum. It would be enforcing some cooperation between the kindred and knowing each other at least at the beginning (less 'accidental' embraces) and different styles of play melting with each others. It should also prevent somehow (with a wise sire preventing it) putting to much violence to a newly embraced player by some Cainites higher in the pecking order, with a better explanation than just putting such a limitation simply in the game mechanics system what happened in some other games. The characters may be doing with each other whatever they want to, but the players' community should have a little responsibility and friendly attitude to the entities entering their new world and new game, just as it happen to new players at LARPs or so. In most cases we could just carelessly f*ck them up just just the first minutes they enter the roleplaying area, but most of the times they are allowed at least to feel the ambient of the game before being shamelessly killed. After that period, when the 'childhood' ends and the one is introduced to the Prince (=released from his tutor's care), the option of checking somebody's sire should be left to thaumaturgy and maybe to some genealogical lists, existing somewhere in the system and at some player/non-player characters as Beckett in main WoD lore. It should have its price, if it's worth to check. And after that 'tutorial - every time the decision is in the hands of the Prince and his mighty Primogen if the domain is too big to make him dealing with that by himself - the valued kindred got acknowledged and invited into the 'adult' kindred society with all options allowed and freedom provided, the trolls are deleting from their kindred life and may simply start once more as a mortal if they botched their presentation's chance. Harsh but simply following the rules.
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HfxTenor
363 days ago
Having the initial period after the Embrace as some sort of in-game Tutorial is a brilliant idea, but it also implies that the sire would be an NPC, and I don't think they'll be going in that direction
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Malena
362 days ago
If they would support guilds or similar institutions within the clans, or made it simply connected to the domain (as we hope the domains will be ruled by players not NPCs), they can connect it with that somehow, if not with the particular sires. If we consider being sired by a player, there must be also interaction kindred-mortal, indicating embracing somebody you *choose to embrace*, so why not some half-done initial caring about them? ATM just free thoughts.
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NurkemC
364 days ago
"Allowing us players to know the identiti of any given Kindred's sire" for "having the sire suffer punishment for the actions of their childer" is an outstanding idea. But, we shouldn't be able to know these things "mystically". I'd prefer to learn via Auspex or Blood Magic (or I can beat up till she speaks?).
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Rivina
364 days ago
It'd probably only work if the WoD GMs are more hands on than the WoW ones were. In WoW trolls were nigh on untouchable. You could report them but that had a very poor sucess rate.
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