For Launch: Factions and you?

Something which may have been address elsewhere (I'm not sure) is what Engines' staff's thoughts on player created factions are. I'm not suggesting any stance in particular, but I think it would be helpful for players to know ahead of time if, for example, a gang created by PCs would ever be acknowledged as a faction by the DM team. While I think change 1 is a great idea, how would that be applied to a faction created by players, who did so with a more elaborate rank structure.

As for the particular factions out there, it should be fairly apparent which ones players flock to, and which ones don't get a lot of interest. Triage could be performed once the data starts rolling in, as it were.

Here's my bit.

I'm really interested in several of the factions on this server, especially the Chesters. There are some questions that I'd like to ask to get a better feel on the factions as a whole:

- Will GM's have the time to run things for the factions?

- Will there be freedom for factions to run themselves and host their own events without GM oversight?

- Can people join factions freely? Do they need GM approval?
-Can players let other players join IG?

- How would the staff handle faction conflict? Such as assassination attempts, corruption scandals, raids against opposing factions etc.

- Can factions change from where they are now from player interaction, or are they set in stone?

- Can players destroy a faction?

There seems to be -for now- no information for factions based around knowledge (ancient studies, medicine, technology), will there be any added before launch for these groups?

Fuzz, I do understand what you're getting at, but on the immediate level of it being player characters getting into disagreements, that'd happen whether there was a rank structure or not. Players will hit disagreements, and trust me, I know it sucks to get dragged into them under any circumstance. But that's also the risk of playing with other people. If a character starts acting like a dink to other people, I doubt they're gonna remain that popular for very long.

To be honest, there'd be only really one way I could see the faction system having ranks and those not feel like someone's efforts are being ignored, and that'd be something like Sundren's old rank system, but even that had it's problems, in that some new person could grind their way up the ladder and become fairly high ranked in a matter of days.

So, to mitigate that whole issue, I'd say either do away with the ranks, or do a rank point system, and hand out some of said points as rewards for participating in events. But to be honest, you'd probably have far less trouble with the former, even taking into account player disagreements.

This is why we're doing away with ranks. You are either a recruit trying to get in, or a full member. You don't need a rank to be important in your Faction, your past deeds will be remembered so if you're that Templar that helped saved the city that one time, you'd be held with more esteem than the newbie that just took her vows.



The Crowders are getting a major overhaul.


Rather than simply say "wait and see" I will give you guys details about a lot of the changes, though bear in mind there will be storyline stuff at the end of the Beta period to transition to the official launch. A period of time will pass IG between Beta ending and Official Launch, a period that will be at LEAST 6 months and could be up to a few years. As such, Beta vs Launch will be a different landscape in many respects. As said from the start, all PCs will also get reset, so if you want to make a new PC, that would be the time. Old PCs would tenuously retain some of their status in certain Factions, but generally speaking we'd like people coming in with a clean slate. That's not to say your efforts and adventures during Beta were all for nought, they are actually shaping where the Launch server will start at, and we know who our loyal players are that have really helped not only test but also make this place feel like a living, breathing world, so don't fret too much about losing all your hard-earned exp/loot.

As for the Crowders, they are getting overhauled. The three main Crowds are remaining in some form, but the separate rank structures and the forced delineation within the Crowders will be mostly gone. Now when you join the Crowders, you're either a recruit or a full member... like being a recruit vs being a Made Man. Once you've proven yourself to be a trustworthy Crowder, you can and will get offered jobs by the different Crowds, either the big 3 or one of the many others... or you can make your own Crowd under the purvey of the general Crowder faction. Specific crowd loyalties will no longer be forced, you can choose to only work for the Wolves, for example, or you can stay a free agent and just take work wherever it comes... either way has its own benefits, but nothing will be mandatory, you will be able to play however you like. Our hope is that this leads to more cohesive groups within the crowders, and hell, if a group of PCs want to make their own Crowd and call themselves "The Trade District Terrors" or whatever, they can go for it, and one of the big three might hire them out to do work. Conversely, they may piss off one of the Big Three, or draw too much heat, and cause a little too many problems... that could lead to its own sort of story. The goal is to add more flexibility and let people make of it what they will.


As for other changes, the biggest change is that one of the main Power factions is no longer going to be a PC faction.

For those curious, it will be the Coppers. That's not to say there will be no outlets for PCs to play "Good Guys" it's just that our goals for what PCs would be doing and what they should be worrying about/focusing on ended up being a lot different from how it played out in Beta, rather predictably. Unfortunately, Cop RP on a PW generally unavoidably boils down to going on patrol, worrying about jurisdiction, being "on duty" while you're online and thus feeling responsible for enforcing laws and stopping crimes, etc. The problem here is that it A- leads to a situation where one player has to try and limit or dictate what another player can do, generally without any mechanical way to enforce it, and B- it often ties the hands of the Cop PC because they can't really wander outside their jurisdiction (we had this happen several times, which prompted the Cross Division) or they feel like their fun social RP is getting interrupted because now they've been witness to a crime and realistically their character wouldn't stand by and do nothing, so they're forced to get involved.

More problematic is that it just causes undue tension and a difficult situation to balance when PCs are on either side. Cops have, in theory, an entire NPC force and a jail and whatnot at their command to help them, while a criminal may or may not have NPCs that could theoretically help. Either way, those NPCs would require DM time to muster up, and generally speaking throughout the Beta any incidents wherein there was heavy Copper action, while interesting, was often rife with problems and at least one or more people getting upset and frustrated on either side.

Ultimately, this is a game. It's a form of entertainment, and we all play here to have fun and enjoy ourselves in our free time. Getting frustrated and annoyed (players and DMs alike) is not a recipe for success at achieving that goal, so minimizing it however possible will ensure some more longevity in both players and DMs, plus just make the whole thing a lot more fun for everyone.

So what's the solution? Well, the easiest first step is to remove Copper PCs, or rather, change the gears on what certain factions represent. Things will unfold such that the actual Coppers will begin to focus on beat cop type work - patrolling, arresting people, issuing tickets and fines, that sort of thing. The actual investigating of major crimes... the detective work and to a degree stuff that would be normally relegated to a modern SWAT team... that they will actually contract out. In the case of the detective work, they'll exclusively contract it out to a firm that will be one the Power faction to replace the Coppers. Think of it like an entire Faction that is essentially Sherlock Holmes... examining crime scenes, interviewing witnesses, building a network of contacts, etc. That is the compelling PC "Good Guy"/"Lawful" type of thing we want to foster, not PCs wandering around areas in circles "on patrol" and then struggling to deal with PC Criminals who may or may not play along. They're an outside group rather than a detective branch of the Copppers because, realistically speaking, it would really make zero sense for a Copper Detective to be unable to call for backup and arrest someone if they witnessed a crime... them not having even that basic authority is a major disconnect. Conversely, Dr Watson beats up people on occasion and may hold them down till the cops get there, but he himself never had any authority to place people under arrest or whatever.

If you're wondering who that firm will be, yes, it will be the Chesterfields. This is not because they need more emphasis, not by any stretch, it's more that when we originally laid down the Chesterfield Detetive Agency, it was actually to kinda mirror the role of the Pinkerton Detective Agency active in the US during the 1800s, which is to say that they were basically mercenaries. Unfortunately, this mirroring wasn't really that obvious and ultimately they took on more of a Detective role anyway, and it seemed more prudent to split apart those two very Steampunk-y archetypes of Holmes-style detective and venture capitalist mercenary.

As such, the new third Power Faction will fulfill a more generalist Mercenary work type role, which will be revealed with the Beta end events as well as the transition to launch. This new Faction will, like the Crowders, be composed of multiple smaller groups with the Faction being a blanket that encompasses all of them. While straightforward Adventurer style work will definitely be a thing that they (and anyone, really) can do, the special thing about this faction is that they, too, are often contracted by either the Coppers or the Calidor Defense Forces (Army, Navy) as sort of Private Military/Peacekeeping Contractors, as well being hired out for private security or militant actions, not all of which would be necessarily legal. They won't necessarily be the "brute force" faction by any stretch, but they will take over the the middle "Gray Area" of hired mercenary work, and may have quite a bit of overlap with both the Chesters and the Crowders, on occasion.


In terms of the religious Factions, we are sticking with the Three, with an emphasis on actually bringing the other two religions (Herism and the Priory) into the forefront, with actual ingame areas for each of them as well as a great deal of extra lore to go along with them. Their existing rank structures will similarly be simplified to recruit or member, however to clarify in the case of the Cathedral and the Templars, all Aspirants would, in fact, still be Recruits. Becoming an actual member would involve actually getting knighted as a Templar. Not all Factions are created equally, and osme are much easier to gain membership to than others. This is intentional.

Finally, the University will remain as a singular "Academic" Faction to pursue scholarly activities, however do not be surprised if the bulk of University plotlines involve infighting/competitions/the politics of Academia as various different schools of thought collide and compete with each other over theories. One of the key facets of the Victorian age was that a lot of people started to have a lot of crazy ideas (alchemy, the theory of ether, phrenology, draining of humours, foot Xray machines) as well as a lot of astounding scientific and technological breakthroughs (genomics, evolution, bacteria theory, the entirety of the Industrial Revolution, etc), so this should come as no surprise to any fans of that sort of stuff that various schools of thought and competing Academic egos will be butting heads with the PCs in the middle of it all or even spearheading their own theories. Who knows, maybe a PC will one day teach a seminar class in some sort of strange Steampunk science, or perhaps archaeology, there's no real limit to where that stuff can go.



I realize this was a big info dump, and I apologize for the slow response, things have been hectic on the devside as we've been ironing things out and cooking up timelines in preparation for launch sometime at the start of the summer (soon!). Hope most of this stuff has whetted your appetites, and I'll see you all in-game!

Stuff that happened in Beta in terms of DM storylines will be considered canon.

Stuff that happened between PCs outside the purview of DM events is entirely up to the players on whether it remains canon... if Ziska's player doesn't care about ignoring something like that after launch, then that's fine. If the player wants to keep stuff like that as part of their PC's backstory, though, they are free to do so. If this is problematic in that some things happen that only one party wants to have follow them into the Live server, my suggestion would be to consider making a new character that's similar to your old one, or perhaps a relative or something. That's totally fine and no one would fault you for it at all, down the line Beta shenanigans will all be ancient history, anyway.


On the topic of existing Beta people that want to continue on with the same PC, I want to clarify exactly how this will go down:

You will have to use the exact same ingame name for the scripts to register and pickup your new character. These scripts are also linked to your GameSpy login and CD-Key, so all of these need to match from Beta to Launch (this is to prevent someone else from loggin in, and say, taking your character's name and trying to steal your identity... Identity theft is a problem in Calidor, too! ).

This new PC will already have a bank account at the Calidor bank, and that bank account will get monthly deposits for the next 12 RL months that will ultimately add up to a percentage (we're still deciding exactly how much) of your Beta wealth. This is determined by your collective bank account, cash on your PC, and value of the gear you have, so you guys won't have to actually do anything like liquidate all your stuff or pull all the money out of the bank or anything like that. The only requirement is that you have to have logged into the Beta server since November 1st, 2015 for the database to have your info, because that's when the script was added and it needs to flag your character on login.

You will also get a portion of your total Beta exp earned in all skills. This exp will be added to you as a lump sum of bonus exp that will just apply to anything, so if you want to try a totally different build, you will still see a faster increase in those skills even if you never touched them in Beta. This bonus exp works just like the bonus exp that DMs often rewarded out early on in the Beta before we had commands to increase specific skills for people and stuff like that. (we will still use flat Bonus exp as a reward for events after launch, though)

Now I did just say above that you should make a new character if there was some drama you want to avoid RPing again. This is a problem since our system uses the name, right? Well, it is entirely acceptable for you to use the same name but be playing a different PC, within reason of course. Maybe your new PC is the cousin of the old one, and they happened to have the same name because they were both named after Grandma. Maybe they are just a totally different person that has the same name, because that happens in real life, too. My only suggestion would be to think about changing the appearance of the PC, so maybe the hair is different and a different color, and you're using a different head model or whatever. Obviously the suggested cultural/ethnic variations would still apply with the name, so maybe suddenly changing where you're from while retaining a name from a totally different place isn't the best idea, but you can make up some story for it, that's fine. We're not going to be policing this at all, because ultimately we want you guys to have the freedom to play how you want without having to worry about losing your progress or being told something needs to be changed. The one thing we WILL be policing is that you cannot walk around saying your name is something completely different than your floaty name from Day 1. Giving a false name or a nickname is one thing, but from the DM standpoint, that floaty name is your character's name, either by birth or chosen, but at some point that name became your PC's name and is their real name, so you can't just summarily ignore it and use it only to cash in on Beta gains, it needs to still apply to the new PC. If you want to change your PC's gender, that's still fine. I refer you to Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue."

Hope that clarifies the transition. If anyone else has any other questions, I guess this thread is as good as any to ask.