Re: [Adonthell-general] Sects and Factions

[Benjamin Walther-Franks]

I'm totally with you: Faction alignment certainly does rule! For all the 
reasons you listed. I also see your point about the elven magic schools, 
that they shouldn't be based on the elements. Now all we need to do is to 
get ir worked out in detail. Maybe I'll come up with a bit of writing sometime.

Some more random thoughts:

-Each faction needs a clear ideology. Its goals, views, beliefs, 
requirements to enter and stuff needs to be well documenetd in some plot 
writing of ours, suplemented by history and background (Andrew! :). Of 
course the player lacks the knowledge of all this and can only discover it 
bit by bit in the game (Dependant on the faction, some may keep their aims 
more concealed than others). Some good reasons for moving future disussion 
of this issue to the plot list, don't you think?

-You can have a good standing with the faction without having joined it. 
This doesn't apply to every faction, some (probably the more fanatic ones) 
would only appreciate you if you're one of them. Other factions may think 
highly of you but respect your independance. Every faction would have a 
maximum faction alignment value that a player can have without having 
joined them.

-I like Nils' idea of using the old alignment scale from -5 to 5, the 
player starting at 0.

-About checking for other factions when joining a faction: It wouldn't seem 
appropriate if at any time anyone can read your alignment "from you face", 
one should be able to conceal one's beliefs and intentions. I'm not quite 
sure how to handle this. Two possible solutions: 1) We go for Nils' ideas 
of using a characters charm skill as to how much he can "hide" his standing 
with the factions. We could even come up with a new lying skil for this or 
something. 2) We just say that up to a value of +3 a character can conceal 
(if he so wishes) his faction alignments, but 4 or 5 make him too obvious, 
marked or well-known. In just the same manner -4 and -5 make his bad 
standing with that faction obvious to anyone. Dunno really, any more ideas?

-One last thing: Are we gonna keep the term "faction alignment" or can 
anybody think of something better? I guess it's alright if after all we're 
dropping the old alignment.


Right, so now it's left to creating a whole nice bunch of factions! Whee...
The number of factions could be endless, but we should limit the number of 
important and powerful factions to something like twelve. It's impoprtant 
that these cover the main basic ideologies or religions we want to have. 
Then there could be dozens of other smaller ones which could pop up as we 
go along. That's room for really whacked stuff, huh?

Ben