Grand Strategic STGODs

[Thirdfain]

I'd like to talk a little bit about STGODs. I'd like to form a- dare I say it!- quorum for the discussion of what has made our STGODs work and what has lead to their sad, sad failure.

Since STGOD4, we've had not a single game thread break 20 posts, with the exception of the borefest that was STGOD2K5. Both FSTGODs failed.

Why? STGOD4, despite the large amount of bitching and complaining, lasted for almost 200 pages and has more warfare, diplomacy, treachery, and drama than any game since the pre-SDnet days. Why did it last so long, and, more importantly, why have the games since been such flops?

[Hotfoot]

On some level, STGODs are little more than debates over what sort of societies, militaries, etc. would work under given constraints. Each person has an opinion, a society they think would work well, and the reasons why. After that, it's a thinly-veiled argument to see who is right. To a degree, the bitching kept people coming.

I'll be honest, STGODs on SDN and elsewhere have not really appealed to me in general. It was only with continual badgering and intellectual curiousity I joined STGOD4, and while I don't entirely regret the decision, frankly, I have yet to find a version that works. People consistantly refuse to play by the same rules unless someone puts a foot down, and when that happens, people scream about not having the creativity and freedom they need.

People also see STGODs as inherantly adversarial, and to a degree, they're right, but they're also inherantly cooperative. It's not easy to maintain that balance, and people end up leaning towards one extreme or the other.

I've done a lot of RPing, rules-based, and freeform. Freeform can ONLY work if the people playing all agree to the same general set of rules and work together. This has the danger of becoming a flower-fest, clearly, but can be done extremely well when it is done right.

Rules-based RPGs are much easier to balance adversarial and confrontational relationships in because the rules define what is or is not allowed. This can result in endless debates in the rules, of course, which means moderation in some way is still needed.

Anyway, in short, STGOD4 was more or less an anomaly. It will not be created again, because in order to do so, you need to have players who have no clue what they're doing painting huge targets on themselves allowing for the more experienced players to take advantage of the situation and move forward from there.

[SirNitram]

The biggest problems with the SDN STGODs has been that they stagnate quickly, no one wants to expend resources in a fight, and when one slides into disuse, another is grabbed up. I've lamented this before.

[Rogue 9]

That's because the first person to expend resources in a fight gets hammered by everyone who didn't expend resources in said fight. See the beginning of STGOD4; Tycho hit me (and did so in a painfully idiotic fashion, striking with inadequate force and deplorable tactics at my strongest point) and was immediately torn to shreds by an instant coalition of other powers. And then, those who don't hammer the first person to so weaken his military stance get conquered in turn because everyone who went to war assumes that they instantly get massive production increases because they seized this or that planet, reflect such in their OOBs, and go on a killing spree. It doesn't help when that goes so far that one player assumes he can instantly win against superior force because hey, he's already conquered so many planets without even breaking a sweat, why should some other guy's core systems be any different?

[Hotfoot]

That's the thing. In a normal STGOD, even with staggered powers, nobody with knowledge of how the system works wants to be the one to make the first move, because inevitably whoever does ends up signing a death warrent for the bangbus, one way or another. Hence why the less experienced players become needed to do the stupid shit to start conflicts. If Tycho and Lazerus hadn't been there to stir shit up in STGOD4, it would have been just as boring and forgettable as any other SDN STGOD.

Which of course brings me back to the point that it's essentially a glorified "OMG my civ is bettar then urs" debate, with everyone dogpiling on the guys who don't know what they're doing, then whoever does that the most turning on the people who weren't as involved.

Also, I'd like to point out that most STGODs (and hell, even most RPs) take an inordinant amount of time to play when things get moving. During STGOD4 I was getting harassed on a regular basis for not posting during the 4 hours I was in classes, which is frankly ridiculous.

At this point, I've pretty much abandoned the idea of ever doing an STGOD again. I gave them a fair shot, and each one has been a pretty bad experience as a whole. I'm not saying that they don't have the upsides, but in the end, I just couldn't enjoy what was essentially a game of bash the newb rather than a collective effort to tell a story of war, intrigue, and galactic civilizations.

I'll stick to Space Empires and GalCiv, thanks. Maybe when Space Empires 5 comes out, I'll start an RP game like those on SDN. Those seem to be anything but boring from what I see.

[Rogue 9]

Yeah, and then we ran out of n00bs. And by that point, Monacora had eaten the various incarnations of Lazarus four or five times.

[Ace Pace]

The problem is, esspecially with all the chatting between differant players nowdays, is that most newbs fix themselves within a few weeks. Maybe what each STGOD needs is mod initiated blow points, as from my limited understanding, most STGODs rapidly devolve into a pre-WW1 situation, nets of treaties with each other forcing each situation to stand down.

Maybe there need to be flashpoints.

[SirNitram]

I'm just thinking back to the ASVS STGOD, which was one long story, not many that flare up and die back. It goes away for a little while, then comes back much later, with rebuilding done.

The bang-bus and treaty webs are a serious issue, though.

[Hotfoot]

Unfortunately an issue with no real resolution, at least none that I have seen. People hate being told what to do, and entire nations became little more than states of like-minded clones with the occasional voice of dissent that was laughed away by the rest of the populace.

This brings up another point to these games. Any nation, especially ones the size of the things we bring to bear in a given STGOD, are far greater beings than we give them credit for. There are aspects to the everyday life of a civilization that every player ignores at one point or another. This is where the debate comes in. On an average day, an average STGODer may spend 4-6 hours thinking about the game and writing posts. Do you really think that in that time, they can post about every little detail in their society? Yet when one little discrepancy crops up, it becomes the new talking point in how such a thing would or wouldn't work in the setting described. This wouldn't be a problem if such a thing didn't matter, but invariably someone comes up with a reason for it to matter, somehow.

It is my opinion, frankly, that games like this can only really be done well by:
1. A group of people who have such trust in each other that they allow other people to regularly NPC people of their own nation
2. A group of people playing a game with hard and fast rules, like a 4X PBW/PBeM game such as Space Empires or MoO, with the story posts as embellishment.

One could argue that the second one strips creative freedom from the story, but I'd argue that such creative freedom rarely makes the story substantively /better/. Nobody fucking cares if your hyperdrive uses microjumps or twelve dimensions or ten. It all has to go roughly the same speed anyway. It doesn't matter how the mechanics of the game works, if you want to call it a Warp Drive or a Hyperdrive, you can. In a hard rule game, there is no cheating, no bullshitting, just strategy and fiction. In the freeform game, there may not be hard rules, but you can work that out peaceably, and focus more on the story and the characters.

STGODs are horrid little abominations which take the worst part of both hard rules and freeform, and the failure rate of them is indicative of this as far as I'm concerned.

[Ace Pace]

A possible way is to make objective oriented games, less free form but more focused.

A way perhaps to avoid the web of treaties is communication restriction(I.E differant empires don't understand each other), and limiting travel speed would eliminate the bangbus.

*throwing out ideas*

[SirNitram]

I would disagree that it's impossible to have a good STGOD, or that they're abominations. ASVS and Spacebattles had many and enjoyable ones. It's more a manner of beating the problems out of the ones we've encountered on SDN and here and then fixing them.

[frigidmagi]

I'm against having other players NPC my nation because of what happened in STGOD 4. Think of Thridfain's bit in the Arcane nation.

Frankly I see no reason to allow someone to muck around in my country and basically steal state secrets like he did. No Thank You.

[SirNitram]

I'm against having other players NPC my nation because of what happened in STGOD 4. Think of Thridfain's bit in the Arcane nation.

Frankly I see no reason to allow someone to muck around in my country and basically steal state secrets like he did. No Thank You.

Hotfoot didn't so much mean NPC the nation, just people within it. I'm sure we all agree that any espionage must be incredibly difficult, and I would actually bring up STGOD 4's conspiracy to bring an end to organic life as a good indicator. It took alot to keep it all covered up.

[frigidmagi]

I don't have a problem with the conspiracy, I do have a problem when someone just NPCs a uprising out of nowhere in order to steal secrets, or attempts a popular rebellion to change someone else's government system.

Players should stay the hell out of other players sandboxes because frankly I'm not convinced in their abilitiy to do anything other than try to wring more advantage for themselves.

[SirNitram]

I don't have a problem with the conspiracy, I do have a problem when someone just NPCs a uprising out of nowhere in order to steal secrets, or attempts a popular rebellion to change someone else's government system.

Players should stay the hell out of other players sandboxes because frankly I'm not convinced in their abilitiy to do anything other than try to wring more advantage for themselves.

I agree in the sense that no one should be able to post them causing an uprising and getting what they want. However, this is because I think a successful STGOD needs mature enough folks to be able to play off one another; I could see such moves being successful after a good deal of effort.

Of course, this calls to mind the annoyance I have with some folks deciding they instantly know what's going on through OOC knowledge. The lengths I had to go to, concealing the Etern OOCly was ridiculous.

[Hotfoot]

You see now why I say totally free-form play requires a huge amount of trust. So much trust, in fact, that it becomes nearly impossible to have truly adversarial relationships, except in rare instances.

I've never seen the ASVS STGODs, but from what I understand, they lean more on the edge of people that trust each other in a more Freeform fashion, while my understanding of the SB.com ones is that they have a much stricter set of rules, which all players volunatarily accept. The SDN STGODs have aspired to neither of these ideals, and in fact have violently rejected both.

Take in mind, when I say trust to NPC, this is what I'm talking about. The trust between the players is that neither player will do something unbelievably lame like creating an uprising out of nothing, but perhaps simply illustrating dissenting voices, looking for those that would listen and follow. The point is that when that level of trust is attained, even if something uncool is done, both players resolve it reasonably, rather than going at each other's throats.

Now, personally, I do everything I can to seperate OOC knowledge from IC motivations, so much so that I occasionally hinder my IC actions accordingly. Even so, sometimes I still inadvertantly slip up, much to my dismay. However, I digress.

In any case, my primary experience with SDN STGODs is that they are nasty, brutish, short, and tend to die alone. They have moments of joy and awesomeness, but in the end, I've found them to be pale imitations to either writing, RPing, or playing a 4X game. Something truly spectacular would have to happen to reverse my opinion on the matter, like a game that progresses with a minimum of bitching and a hefty amount of cooperation. A game that actually does things, has conflict, death, change, and so on.

[Rogue 9]

And I still kick myself for not sending scout ships into the Krell-claimed areas of space. Forget Machiavelli's axiom about mercenaries for five minutes and look what happens...

Though the conspiracy itself really didn't make sense. Why would the Ousters conspire to destroy themselves?

[frigidmagi]

They weren't, Nitram was playing them.

[Thirdfain]

And I still kick myself for not sending scout ships into the Krell-claimed areas of space. Forget Machiavelli's axiom about mercenaries for five minutes and look what happens...

Though the conspiracy itself really didn't make sense. Why would the Ousters conspire to destroy themselves?

See, this is why you aren't a conniver. The Machine was an ally of convenience. It's assumed that once all competing forms of Warmlife were wiped out (besides the Ouster vampire-fodder and the Krell janissaries,) Basil the Red-Handed's Vampire royal family would be able to take out the machines whenever.

[frigidmagi]

Damn stupid assumation to.

[SirNitram]

The vampires, the Ousters, and the Overseer were all planning to let the others bear the brunt of the assaults and then knife them. The Ousters, I think, would come out the worst of the backstab-a-thon, when their colonies are vented and boarded by Overseer drones. The vampires and the machines could easily battle for centuries, though.

[Rogue 9]

And I still kick myself for not sending scout ships into the Krell-claimed areas of space. Forget Machiavelli's axiom about mercenaries for five minutes and look what happens...

Though the conspiracy itself really didn't make sense. Why would the Ousters conspire to destroy themselves?

See, this is why you aren't a conniver. The Machine was an ally of convenience. It's assumed that once all competing forms of Warmlife were wiped out (besides the Ouster vampire-fodder and the Krell janissaries,) Basil the Red-Handed's Vampire royal family would be able to take out the machines whenever.

Sorry, paladin player no matter what the game is, I'm afraid. I don't connive; I smite connivers.

[Hotfoot]

Sorry, paladin player no matter what the game is, I'm afraid. I don't connive; I smite connivers.

You know, paladins don't have to be lawful stupid.

[Rogue 9]

Who said anything about being stupid about it? I don't seem to recall instantly going to war against the vampires as soon as I learned of them.

[Thirdfain]

The vampires, the Ousters, and the Overseer were all planning to let the others bear the brunt of the assaults and then knife them. The Ousters, I think, would come out the worst of the backstab-a-thon, when their colonies are vented and boarded by Overseer drones. The vampires and the machines could easily battle for centuries, though.

Ah, but all along, the Ousters were the Vampire's favoured sons. Ousters were the perfect herd-animals for Basil the Red-Handed. The whole point of Basil making Elanie a Vampire, and granting her noble titles, was to literally bind the Ousters in to Vampire society. Eventually, she would have been the Blood Queen (with Basil conveniently pulling the strings from the shadows.) The Ousters and the Vampires were to become a single political entity, more or less. For certain, many, many Ousters would die, but Elanie's lineage would have survived, and with it, Basil's dream.

Think about it- they are aggressive, and breed very rapidly, but they have strong herd instincts and little concern for individual lives. Humans were a pain in the ass to maintain, they required dampening spells and the like. The Ousters would have been useful in the long run to Basil (and, in a twisted way, the reverse was true- under the Blood Kingdom, he Ousters would have been able to accomplish their goals as well.) The Machines would not.

PS, The Krell were securely on my side for whatever post-war maneuvering erupted. You would have been alone.