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Research
With Hallifax raising Ascendants, I've done a lot of thinking. Despite being a city of science and arts, Hallifax has never raised a Scientist or Artist as an Ascendant, and why should they? There's not a single Ascendant power that helps them support the city better through science or the arts. So I got to thinking how there could be more of a choice in whom you would want to raise as an Ascendant, and it's with that I prefer two new powers, one for Beauty, and one for Knowledge.
For Knowledge, I want there to be a power that increases the value of winning the scholarly culture challenge, as well as increased value from bringing in scholars and writing scholarly books.
For Beauty, I want there to be a power that increases the value of winning theatre, as well as increased value from producing plays and bringing in bards.
Not sure if literary books should be thrown on Knowledge, Beauty, or a different domoth entirely, though it really should be used somehow.
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As a secondary addition to make these powers more appealing to invest into, I've been toying with the concept of research. On one hand, I'm not sure how well suited Lusternia is for a "tech tree". The main problem with any kind of tech tree is that, ultimately, you reach the end, and then what? You could heap on new technologies, but if every technology means another blessing, then that's just going to cause a ridculous arms-race of blessings.
So instead, I feel if Lusternia should do anything with the concept of "research" it needs to be focused on larger one-off events. I've seen people want the Sileni race to become playable, though there's the obvious problem of the Sileni race being extinct. Obviously, if the admins want Sileni in the game, then they'll find some way to get Sileni into the game, but why not let the player-base also get a hand in on this. Declare the Sileni revival to be a research project, and from thereon out, every city will have the ability to accure research points, determined by the value of their cultural efforts (though ignoring Cultural Centre). When the research period reaches an end, determined either by time, or by an org having reached a research point threshold, the research project is resolved in a way flavoured to whichever org completed the research project. If Celest finishes first, then the Sileni are resurrected through a Celestian miracle, if Magnagora completes the project, the Sileni return as steampunk zombies, and if Hallifax finishes first, they're made through a bunch of complicated cloning and eugenics.
For Knowledge, I want there to be a power that increases the value of winning the scholarly culture challenge, as well as increased value from bringing in scholars and writing scholarly books.
For Beauty, I want there to be a power that increases the value of winning theatre, as well as increased value from producing plays and bringing in bards.
Not sure if literary books should be thrown on Knowledge, Beauty, or a different domoth entirely, though it really should be used somehow.
---
As a secondary addition to make these powers more appealing to invest into, I've been toying with the concept of research. On one hand, I'm not sure how well suited Lusternia is for a "tech tree". The main problem with any kind of tech tree is that, ultimately, you reach the end, and then what? You could heap on new technologies, but if every technology means another blessing, then that's just going to cause a ridculous arms-race of blessings.
So instead, I feel if Lusternia should do anything with the concept of "research" it needs to be focused on larger one-off events. I've seen people want the Sileni race to become playable, though there's the obvious problem of the Sileni race being extinct. Obviously, if the admins want Sileni in the game, then they'll find some way to get Sileni into the game, but why not let the player-base also get a hand in on this. Declare the Sileni revival to be a research project, and from thereon out, every city will have the ability to accure research points, determined by the value of their cultural efforts (though ignoring Cultural Centre). When the research period reaches an end, determined either by time, or by an org having reached a research point threshold, the research project is resolved in a way flavoured to whichever org completed the research project. If Celest finishes first, then the Sileni are resurrected through a Celestian miracle, if Magnagora completes the project, the Sileni return as steampunk zombies, and if Hallifax finishes first, they're made through a bunch of complicated cloning and eugenics.
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
3
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
Research as a way to convert culture into new stuff is something that I really like and would love to see. I would also like to see it a resource of its own with both big purchases and the option of putting it towards temporary benefits with more concrete mechanical gain in the hope of tying culture more closely to the other facets of Lusternia. Right now it's kind of an isolated system, and I am strongly in favor of anything that helps integrate it with the rest of the game. Should be fairly minor things, like getting an extra point of power per essence or providing a 1/8 (or whatever, just a boost that's convenient but not necessary to max the stat) boost to a vital. Things that can provide a constant drain on research for small benefits for the orgs that are either not interested or not able to go for big research projects. Competitive events as mentioned by @Kiradawea with the Sileni are cool, but I'm worried that if that's the only time where research is relevant it will result in huge publishing surges when one is running and a mostly ignored library other times. I know I'd be inclined to stockpile books for the competition. That's a bad thing, since the publishing booms can be really rough for a librarian to deal with.
Should be able to generate research through both winning prestige and publishing books, just like library score is generated now. Lit books and plays (although not lectures) are kind of weird as a tool for research but should generate it to avoid strongly favoring scholarly writers.
Putting those powers on vernal ascendants would provide an incentive to raise culture people, but I don't think it would be big enough to make it actually happen. I think it'd be better add visionaries, raised as major research projects by the org. They could be fluffed as these genius cultural paragons, but it could also be fluffed as a different type of ascendant. Normal ones get raised through a huge surge of power that sort of brute forces them up to ascendancy, visionaries get raised through a more efficient procedure that had to be developed to suit the individual in question. Separating the two power sets would mean that you wouldn't have to worry about fitting the powers to specific domoths. You'd probably want a few more powers to choose from if visionaries were implemented.
A side note on powers: Be very careful of boosting the culture score from prestige wins. A small boost that can help work as a tiebreaker if the total scores are close is fine. One that's too big will hugely incentivize submitting books from people with the power, which in turn makes it less desirable to submit things by less established authors. That would turn the library into more of a closed club, and is a very bad thing.
As a less relevant aside, sometimes books result in things showing up in cities anyway. Pretty sure that some mushrooms starting showing up in Mag after @Kalnid wrote a (very good) book about them.
I literally just made a point about this in the PKvsRP thread
Avatar is the reward for establishing rapport with an admin. It's not linked specifically to producing culture for your organization. It is linked entirely to what expectations one specific individual has to you, rather than the whole organization you belong to.
RP also comes in tons of forms and flavors. There's family RP, order RP, and yeah, even combat-driven RP. Finding a mechanic that rewards all those role play styles equally is tough, and in my opinion, kind of futile. They're all different, and if there's a specific aspect of any you'd like to tweak, recommendations are worth a shot. But I honestly think the idea of visionaries isn't something strictly necessary, because these types of RP are already rewarded, just in different ways.
tl;dr Culture does not equal RP.
While I have no dog in this fight (Stratas ain't getting special snowflake, no matter what it's for) I would note that every Vernal god mentioned, as well as the rest of the Nine, and, to be honest, every Vernal I've ever heard about (Il'vania, Il'garala) was a combatant, or at least willing to throw down. Maybe not in mortal life, we'll likely never know. But d'Varsha's literal first act as a Vernal God was to fight Illith. Urlach raised an army of undead to fight for him. Dio was the Holy Diver, down too long in the midnight sea lead the heavenly hosts into battle. Vestera may not have attacked directly, be she used her illusions to distract the Soulless. Il'garala is known for creating destructive hearthstones that could wound the Soulless and drain their energy, and while Il'vania may have made healing hearthstones, she lost her life in a battle against Kethuru.
In short, if we're modelling VA after Vernal Gods, there's a lot more to support the idea that VA's should be 'all around' good, like @Synkarin said, rather than splitting something everything up so there's VA for domoth and then something else for RP.
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."