Research

Kiradawea

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.

---

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.

Tremula

I love, love, love, love, LOVE the idea of furthering culture competition to see tangible results! Right now it's just flashing who has the biggest library (*cough cough* @Portius), but seeing something like an entire race or new additions to a city, or [insert cool thing here] as a result of us role-playing out the research would be both the bees knees and the cat's pyjamas.

Please to implement.

Daraius

Tremula said:

 new additions to a city, or [insert cool thing here] as a result of us role-playing out the research

This is supposed to be a thing already, I gather, but it's limited by admin coding free time and other esoteric things that aren't always disclosed. RIP Toshan assistant archivist.  (

Sylandra

(Side bar, Prav totally published stuff and so did Morbo. Hell so did Shedrin and Vivet. Not to say Halli has to publish scholarly folk, but it has a pretty good track record!)

Portius

A few years ago there was somebody who suggested adding in a cultural/rp version of ascendants with their own set of powers. I think they called them visionaries. I am also going to use that terminology.

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.

Kalnid

Portius said:

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.

Confirming this, after I wrote Magnagoran Mycology three of the mushrooms mentioned in it showed up around the world. Huge thanks to whoever it was that got those in place.

Kiradawea

Sylandra said:

(Side bar, Prav totally published stuff and so did Morbo. Hell so did Shedrin and Vivet. Not to say Halli has to publish scholarly folk, but it has a pretty good track record!)

Yes, they published stuff. But they were not raised for their ability to publish works. Hallifax *has* never raised anyone because they were recognized as a great scientist or a great artist. But that is not my problem. My problem is the lack of incentive. Why would you ever raise anyone as anything but a domoth harvester and fighter? If Vernal is supposed to remain the "end goal" of the game, then to me it feels unfair that we'd exclude the Irillias and Portiuses of the game. Vernal needs to offer something useful even for those who primarily create cultural content, or we can go with @Portius suggestion for visionarie, though that'll still require creating a powerset which makes the investment worth it.

Synkarin

Kiradawea said:

Sylandra said:

(Side bar, Prav totally published stuff and so did Morbo. Hell so did Shedrin and Vivet. Not to say Halli has to publish scholarly folk, but it has a pretty good track record!)

Yes, they published stuff. But they were not raised for their ability to publish works. Hallifax *has* never raised anyone because they were recognized as a great scientist or a great artist. But that is not my problem. My problem is the lack of incentive. Why would you ever raise anyone as anything but a domoth harvester and fighter? If Vernal is supposed to remain the "end goal" of the game, then to me it feels unfair that we'd exclude the Irillias and Portiuses of the game. Vernal needs to offer something useful even for those who primarily create cultural content, or we can go with @Portius suggestion for visionarie, though that'll still require creating a powerset which makes the investment worth it.

I literally just made a point about this in the PKvsRP thread 

 tl:dr 

 Vernal Ascendents should be all around people, not just people who excel in a single aspect. 

 If you want to make push visionaries or whatever, go for it, no qualms whatsoever.

Cyndarin

So not to be a total downer, but aren't god orders RP rewards? If you're an amazing RPer/writer/whatever, to me the end goal is Avatar. The mortal instrument of an all powerful being, capable of founding a cult with special RP powers.

I just think things like this start getting awkward. Do we need special snowflake status for more things? What about ascendant for questing? Or Ascendant for cooking? I don't think Ascendant is the absolute end goal, to me Avatar was way harder to get than Vernal. I actually got vernal while trying to get Avatar. 

Enyalida

They're RP rewards for Godly RP.

Kiradawea

Synkarin said:

Kiradawea said:

Sylandra said:

(Side bar, Prav totally published stuff and so did Morbo. Hell so did Shedrin and Vivet. Not to say Halli has to publish scholarly folk, but it has a pretty good track record!)

Yes, they published stuff. But they were not raised for their ability to publish works. Hallifax *has* never raised anyone because they were recognized as a great scientist or a great artist. But that is not my problem. My problem is the lack of incentive. Why would you ever raise anyone as anything but a domoth harvester and fighter? If Vernal is supposed to remain the "end goal" of the game, then to me it feels unfair that we'd exclude the Irillias and Portiuses of the game. Vernal needs to offer something useful even for those who primarily create cultural content, or we can go with @Portius suggestion for visionarie, though that'll still require creating a powerset which makes the investment worth it.

I literally just made a point about this in the PKvsRP thread 

 tl:dr 

 Vernal Ascendents should be all around people, not just people who excel in a single aspect. 

 If you want to make push visionaries or whatever, go for it, no qualms whatsoever.

I'm not asking for writers to be made into Vernals. I'm asking for there to be a reason for writers to be made into Vernals. For there to be something to support a wide spectrum of vernals, something for all the d'Varshas and Urlachs and Dionamuses and Vesteras. Giving skills that better reflect what those vernals did would be a good first step.

Celina said:

So not to be a total downer, but aren't god orders RP rewards? If you're an amazing RPer/writer/whatever, to me the end goal is Avatar. The mortal instrument of an all powerful being, capable of founding a cult with special RP powers.

I just think things like this start getting awkward. Do we need special snowflake status for more things? What about ascendant for questing? Or Ascendant for cooking? I don't think Ascendant is the absolute end goal, to me Avatar was way harder to get than Vernal. I actually got vernal while trying to get Avatar. 

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.

Cyndarin

As opposed to RP rewards for Mortaly RP? We're splitting hairs, at that point. What's being asked is for exclusive RP rewards/snowflake status, when that already exists to an extent, both as Avatar and as VA. 

Ultimately, I don't see an issue with changing domoth powers to benefit all aspects of the game from PK to influencing to library stuff, but we go too far in developing whole new systems to benefit RPers above PKers with visionary/whatever title stuff. 

Synkarin

That's precisely what you're asking for, powers that justify making people who excel in singular aspects of the game equivalents of VA. 

Sylandra

Maybe I'm just content, but I've never felt Lusternia hindered me from pursuing artistic RP in any way. The library and stage mechanics (oh man the stage) are pretty awesome in Lusternia specifically. Also, Hallifax in particular pays an ungodly sum of credits for cultural output. There's also the Beauty seal which is a lot of fun to strive for! Tbh I feel Beauty seal is more endgame for the writerly RP niche than VA, and I don't really mind that.

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.

Portius

I don't want to get terribly invested in this discussion, but it seems like a lot of people here are equating culture and RP, and I feel like I should address that. Culture is a coded and competitive system. It has fairly clear rules for scoring and direct mechanical consequences for winning and losing.  People can RP in ways that interact with the culture system, just like they can RP in ways that interact with the combat systems. However, using the culture system does not require or necessarily involve any RP beyond not producing blatantly OOC books and plays. Doing culture and doing RP may very well be correlated with each other. I have not gathered the data required to confirm or deny that, but I suspect that it is. But there are also people such as myself who do the culture things but find most of what the heavy RPers do really tedious and generally avoid it.

tl;dr Culture does not equal RP.

Stratas

Kiradawea said:

I'm not asking for writers to be made into Vernals. I'm asking for there to be a reason for writers to be made into Vernals. For there to be something to support a wide spectrum of vernals, something for all the d'Varshas and Urlachs and Dionamuses and Vesteras. Giving skills that better reflect what those vernals did would be a good first step.

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.

Daraius

Where'd you hear Tosha was a combatant?

Sylandra

Portius said:

I don't want to get terribly invested in this discussion, but it seems like a lot of people here are equating culture and RP, and I feel like I should address that. Culture is a coded and competitive system. It has fairly clear rules for scoring and direct mechanical consequences for winning and losing.  People can RP in ways that interact with the culture system, just like they can RP in ways that interact with the combat systems. However, using the culture system does not require or necessarily involve any RP beyond not producing blatantly OOC books and plays. Doing culture and doing RP may very well be correlated with each other. I have not gathered the data required to confirm or deny that, but I suspect that it is. But there are also people such as myself who do the culture things but find most of what the heavy RPers do really tedious and generally avoid it.

tl;dr Culture does not equal RP.

---------------QUOTE BOX GOES HERE-------------------

Sure. I mean by that logic, families don't equal RP either. Neither do orders. Neither does combat. Neither does your race necessarily. Or combat.

But a lot of people do focus their RP around these things. My point was more that I have outlets as a roleplayer to do the things I want to do, and that there are a variety of outlets available for people who want to do other certain kinds of RP. I'm curious where people feel we are lacking in those RP outlets.

Stratas

Daraius said:

Where'd you hear Tosha was a combatant?

I thought I had read it somewhere in your Senpai Quettle thread. But hastily skimming it, I'm not finding that. Sooo.... I must have just been watching Underworld at some point and was thinking of Tosha as a werewolf fighting Kate Beckinsale?

Saran

Research is kinda a cool idea, I just... idk, I feel like just having it based on culture kinda doesn't work in my mind. Just cause like... if Serenwilde didn't really do anything focused around the research topic but they managed to pull their finger out and racked up enough culture points to "win", well someone else who has this amazing thing worked out for their research could lose just because of numbers.

Though the only other idea I really have is more around... well having some method of tracking a project. You'd perform rituals, or experimentation, quest for items or to strengthen connections with groups that would help you out, write books on your theories, etc. Just the general stuff that is more stereotyped as "rp" actions. With the admin checking in on your submissions and being like "yeah, that checks out, you progress a little on your project". But that's extra work for the admin

Saran

Of course, my requisite, revamp conflict systems, tie all of the things together so that culture becomes part of how we fight the enemy!!!

Akyaevin

Isn't it already? I mean it generates power, which is generally Lusternia's way of keeping score.

Saran

I guess, but I thought power was kinda meaningless at this point. 

And well, when I imagine the system I'm daydreaming of I guess it'd be like tech trees that require maintenance and sacrifices while offering the benefits currently available, with the current conflict mechanics being how we progress and maintain those things, offering the opportunity to do really badly at say flares one time but still maintain some of your benefits that are drawn from them (so like... insanity in your territory would be in the tech tree, but it would require a resource earned from flares so if you've previously stocked up on that resource then you'd still be able to cover the maintenance drain for a bit even if you lost one)

In that system I imagine there would be ways to capitalise on your reputation (earned through culture and questing etc), while also opening the options of trading resources with other organisations, or raiding them to steal from them.