Disbanding Guilds

[Tribalware]

Doctor characters are obviously very important but i dont see why they cant be collapsed into a separate wing of the scholars or vice versa, some sort of ic merger might explain the pooling of knowledge and then itd just be one big university with different branches, medicine being one of them.

I think closing inactive guilds until someone wants to put some effort into one is a great idea, itd make the game feel more populated i think in a counter intuitive sort of way.

[Eris]

I'd argue that Knights are core, too.

[Kinaed]

I think my view of 'core' is polluted a bit by the history of TI. For me, I'd say:

Merchants
Troubadours
Order
Nobles
Reeves
Brotherhood
Knights

The rest came along later, or sort of evolved out of plots people had, but weren't really fundamentals... but from a functional point of view, it can certainly be argued that some of the above just aren't necessary - or even all of them, if people were disciplined about enacting a game's theme. I think having their physical presence is game-dynamic important though.

[Platypus]

Here's one take on what the core game is in the inquisition and what guilds are necessary to facilitate it.

If we examine TI as a take on the game MAFIA!, which I actually think is highly appropriate, then we need three groups. Bad guys, law officers, and citizens.

The bad guys are mages, so it follows that TI needs mages, but not a mages guild. Though motives in game are obviously very complicated, essentially mages attempt to thwart the Order in some manner, even if all that means is staying hidden and not getting themselves killed.

The law officers are the knights and Order. They win if they kill all the mages. I would posit that knights and Order guilds must exist in the game as they are the source of all conflict.

Finally the citizens are the vast pool of generally good people who lack the ability to fight the mages directly, but support the Order and Knights indirectly in rooting out mages. No guild is required to play a citizen.

Thus the game consists of a pool of Knights and Order trying to root out mages, while mages resist. The citizens exist to confuse the issue by accusing each other and so forth.

Any guilds outside knights and Order are just there to allow citizens to find something neat to do with their time before getting falsely accused and burned.

So it sounds extreme, but imagine the only players in the game allowed were freemen, knights and orderites. When you type where you would see: Knights Lithmorran Office 3; Bear and the Boar 5; Order cell 2.

Just a perspective, not actually advocating for it.

[Kinaed]

I thought of all that, actually :) Highly aware.

There are a few things missing, however, from that analysis, as compelling as it is - and therefore pointedly worth considering, btw - such as that TI is about RP, not really about the Order/Mage/Citizen game. Whereas that describes the central conflict on a certain level, and what keeps the game going, it's really about tracking a given character's story. The hook is in the mafia game underneath - it's what provides impetus to RP and a kind of loosely defined base role to get the juices flowing and add a bit of excitement to the environment.

If we take that postulate to its extreme, and were to imagine a world where we axed everything but Order/Knights, I think we can all immediately see the flaws and how the system wouldn't be fun anymore. The other guilds provide other role outlets, which is why I'd say they're core. You need enough roles to keep the game going, but not too much variety to prevent consolidation of people together as RP requires interaction. As the pbase expands, I'd say the number of roles and nuance can increase to accommodate.

[Tribalware]

Its effective but I think the main draw for me when it comes to text games has always been the fact that rp never has to conform rigidly to a classic good vs. bad scenario due to your limitless options. What if the mages active at the time don't want to be the necessary force of evil in the game? what if knights want to fall from grace and become anti-paladins of a sort?

All im saying is i think its dangerous to outlay unspoken fundamentals that encourage mass character conformity. Whilst its true that the church and the mages are always scrapping i think a light side/dark side motif is unfitting. Personally I can't stand organised religion, and today was informed that the erra pater states heresy to include 'any contradiction of the churches view' which seemed evil as all burning hell to me. Fascists.

I like to see the game as a more complex web of relationships influenced heavily by history but not by any means confined by it.

[Kinaed]

There is a legal definition of heresy, actually, and sins expressly stated. It's an expression of the player's view that states that going against the Order's view is heresy. Rather, going against the Lord of the Spring's law is heresy - it just so happens that some members of the Order view themselves as enacting the Lord's Law.

All in all, I categorically agree with Skarla, though I think the interpretation by the player above is theme supported. Having that sort of "law" is so open to abuse it's to be expected, which is part of the theme. But I think there'd equally be good people in the Order who join it to take care of the poor, uplift the helpless, and genuinely save souls because they believe magic is taint that will bar a soul from union with the Lord of the Springs. Likewise, magery can be anything from a character with the intent to summon demons to strike back at the Order for murdering his or her family to the poor soul who found out they have an affinity for magic and just can't stop doing it - addiction being what it is.

Certainly the staff have no fixed view on which of those approaches is definitively right. However, I have noticed that some players get a view in their mind and tell other players that their view of it is the truth. Alas, if there was a truth about anything, it's that the game is, within the boundaries of the help files, intended to be what players want to make of it. (And honestly, a lot of help files were written by players that I know nothing about and come across and boggle at, so even those aren't exactly sacrosanct. It's a medival game about church conflict where magic is real and a bunch of other roles exist. Beyond that, I like flexible.)