Getting Factions To A Higher Quality

[Syaoran]

Because then, since they aren't PC factions being jealously guarded, they can be used as NPC antagonists or whatever. Hell, have them go the way of the freespacers for all I care. Just do something to clear out the dead matter.

Massive fallacy. If you burn the faction, you can not use it for NPC uses because its assets and such are gone. Its races too. Freespaccers also aren't gone. They're still alive and kicking, and even have an FM and a plot for them. They're just protected mostly by Nepleslia at the moment. But if the faction is gone it can not be used.

You seem to be mistaken on what "letting the faction exist" means. It does not mean that the faction is sitting there not doing anything or getting used in some way. It just means that nothing major is going on with the faction itself, but players and GMs are still allowed to use members of said faction to further their characters and plots as long as it does not effect the faction's image. For instance someone could technically make an Abwehran or a Abwehran based organization. Someone could still have their plot visit the Abwehran stations and space. The only thing being stopped is changing the faction as a whole, until they have someone in charge who can take care of their image properly. But if we burned them, firstly one of my RPs, would massively be effected because the captain is Abwehran, and the base of operations for them is in Abwer space.

 

[Eistheid]

As intended I have read the initially linked article that @Wes wanted to draw attention to, as such I'll try to elaborate upon what was written in it, though admittedly I don't have too much to say relating to it, since a lot of it reflects more on their project rather than SARP.

The biggest point that is noteworthy in that article is the mention of co-dependant factions. This is something that I feel SARP could work on, but also is something that is the some of the most difficult to work on... SARP's factions are largely isolated IC. Plotships even more so. Often this is due to GMs not wanting to get caught up in what they may view as obtuse political agendas or slants. A desire to write a story and have fun, rather than worrying about what someone they might disagree with is doing. While this allows us to continue to run smoothly in some respects, it also hurts us in others... Those issues however, are not a part of the subject of this thread.

I suppose the best I can suggest is getting the FMs together to discuss the relationships of the factions, I know some overtures have been made toward unity IC and as such there is some small interaction. But unless the FMs and the player base as a whole pitch in to discuss what they'd like to see from inter-faction relations not much can be said on the subject...

I suppose one of the things that immediately comes to mind about SARP is Yamatai's reputation... For better or worse Yamatai is seen by the community as being an untouchable behemoth. This is less in the sense of it is a reliable setting element and more in the sense of people being afraid that if they don't creep around on eggshells that Yamatai will swoop in and erase them... People OOC are afraid of Yamatai, this is something that needs to change. It strangles a lot of potential creativity and plot ideas when members of this site have to be afraid that a misstep will result in all of their hard work being obliterated because they weren't careful enough around the giant in the room.

I'm not exactly sure what could fix this, though perhaps overtures to discuss things more openly could help. I just feel that we could all benefit by knowing where we stand and have the ability to discuss things without worrying that there will be IC or even potentially OOC retribution. We all need the peace of mind that our creations won't be hurt. Just as FMs require control over the fate of their faction, GMs and players need to know that they won't be punished without being given a chance to discuss events.

I know I point largely at Yamatai with this, but comparatively the reach and influence of the other factions in the setting are next to nothing, and the involvement with them even smaller. If there are examples of other factions getting involved in events I'd like to see them elaborated upon, after all we need to discuss how all factions in the setting have operated and not just focus upon the one that hosts the largest number of threads.

 

[Born-On-Board]

If a certain faction proves to be inactive for a long time due to neglect or sheer lack of player interest, then it seems to me that that content should be reviewed, and either cut due to inherent quality issues (Passing NTSE aside, there are some factions far more 'equal' than others) or left as an 'NPC' faction (and maybe even taken off the character creation page, if we're worried about all the old factions cluttering that up) for players to use in their plots as desired, or to make characters from in the future, should someone who wants to FM them step up.

I mostly agree with Eistheid, that deleting old content serves very little purpose - most of the time. There should still be an option to remove or alter old content that clearly isn't up to snuff, perhaps in a thread very much like this where the old content is dredged up, put to a poll of the site (with links to the material so people can read it and decide for themselves) and then either kept, deleted, or demoted to an 'NPC' faction according to an informal 'jury' of the content's 'peers', if you will.

As for players creating new factions, well. I think a certain amount of tempering expectations should be in order. I don't think restricting players from making factions is the right move, but I do think that the approval of these factions should be taken very seriously indeed, especially if the intent of the player making them is that they will be playable, settings-contributing factions. It's one thing to make a one, two system race that's fairly isolated, it's another entirely to make a race with the aspiration that it will one day hold its own RP forum. To that issue, I can't say I have any ready, silver bullet solutions in mind, besides making it clear to the persons involved who are making it that if they intend for their special snowflake to be a heavy hitter ( or really, anything other than a footnote in an index) in the setting, that it will require enormous dedication and time on their part, and that success is very, very far from being guaranteed.

 

[Aendri]

To add on to what BoB loosely referred to, I definitely think that some of the character creation process has gotten too broadly spread. I don't think we need CCGs and full on pages for every possible race someone could ever play as, especially the ones which aren't full factions, and that's in large part just because of how hard it would be on new players to run a character like that. Some of the weirder races shouldn't be the kind of thing you just walk down a checklist and hand in a paper at the end of the process, they really SHOULD be something you put serious work and effort into figuring out what would be true for a character of the race. 'Spacers are one of the more common examples of this issue, where we've had plenty of 'spacer characters who just don't make SENSE, simply because they don't reflect things that are true about their race, and in lots of cases, it's because it's not the kind of thing you notice on a quick look-through. Their lifespan is probably the biggest one, considering most of the 'spacers alive now (at least the organic ones) weren't alive in YE0. That's the kind of shortened lifespan that dramatically changes how a character would look at the world, and I honestly can't name many 'spacer bios that even loosely mention it.

 

[Jimmy]

I suppose being the FM of one of these "enemy" factions, and a sort of mish-mash of co-co-co-FM/undertaker for one of our abandoned factions, I guess I'm in a pretty unique position to comment on this topic. Keep in mind, I'm definitely one of those with my hat in the ring, so I am not above accusations of bias.

First of all, expecting a single overworked FM who has to spit out at least five high-density information articles before a faction even becomes somewhat playable to be able to develop other facets and nuances of that faction to the same degree as factions worked on by dozens of people for over a decade is unrealistic at best and shockingly elitist at worst.

Second, saying that more factions can detract from a setting and advocating for more development of "core" factions would hold more weight with me if most of SARP's "Core" factions were capable of taking any major action at all without becoming bulls in the china shop.

I don't really have a plan for what I'd like to talk about right now, but I guess I'll just cover some of the general stuff. I'll give them headings so people can read the bits they're interested in as they like.


NEW FACTIONS

In SARP, new factions are hard. The world is against you. Admins and players tell you you're not wanted, you hit the pavement trying to find opportunities to appear even as a cameo only for most to shut the door in your face. You rarely get a chance to advertise your faction in roleplay, and even then often incompletely.

Your choices are to either strike out alone, try to gather players and start a plot hoping you have the skills to keep it alive and the time to develop the faction at the same time, or you wallow and get reduced to "NPC" status in a process that seems to be slowly gentrifying the FM's forum.

Occasionally we see the odd newbie with stars in their eyes wanting to bring something they find cool to the table, these are easy to dismiss, poorly planned and thought-out. Except when they suddenly have art, in which case they appear to breeze through like the Gartagens did.

But what scares me is seeing our older, veteran players, guys who have been here for years, run plots and gotten involved in at least one of the factions. These guys are turning around and wanting to start their own factions now, trying to bring something new into the setting, and they're just being crushed by a setting that doesn't care.

Why are they making factions? Do the current factions not suit? Do they want to explore their creative potential? Do they feel strait-jacketed by circumstances beyond their control? I don't know about all them, but I see other people looking at their creations with absolute contempt and saying they don't belong.

Not invalid criticism, perhaps, but discouraging nonetheless. I seem to find myself as one of the few pillars of support for a few of these aspiring FM's, and it kills me to see them dealing with other friends of mine in this setting and being shat on by them. But the biggest problem, the one growing bigger by the day is what happens when these dreams are crushed.

These players are GM's, losing them would be a travesty. Me, I'm just some random smuck who plays funny characters in other peoples plots and writes half-wit headlines in the News forum. It's these guys who are the real content creators.

One thing I would like to see people examine just as much as the content of a new faction is the plan for them. What will its purpose be in the setting, which direction will it go, does it have an end-game. This is what I see a lot people missing from the critique of these new factions.



DEAD FACTIONS

One thing I seem to come across with a lot of these "dead" factions is the fact that they're actually wallowing more in a state of being "half-dead", interest and minor interaction are still present, at the very least many players have a sense of nostalgia about playing them. The main problem is that the central drive that pushed them to new interactions and situations is gone, either too busy to continue or loping in and out of activity just enough to prevent others from taking the helm without looking over their shoulder.

You can practically see the rose-tinted goggles fall over peoples eyes as they talk about their Iroma adventures, and Matt has been a friend to many older players here. Both are respected, but both of their factions have been allowed to languish in a setting that doesn't know how to deal with them.

I don't know how to fix these problems. But neither the Iroma nor the Abwherans are standing in the way of any grand designs at the moment and so for the time being perhaps they should be left until one is worthy to pull that particular sword form its stone.

I'll talk about the Gartagens last since they're the ones I'm intimately involved with. The Gartagens too were left to rot after their primary drive left the site under questionable circumstance, I can't speak for all Gartagen players, but I felt raw, betrayed and midly hurt. Time hasn't healed all wounds but it has been thrust upon me to do something, and I feel the need to at least provide myself with some closure and allow others who still have an interest to develop their own ideas within the faction.

I have worked closely with Kyle to find a reasonable end-game for gartagens as a whole, and we are in the opening stages of advancing towards that. I like to think this is one of the few times a "dead" faction has been put to rest in a respectable manner in the setting without being totally obliterated overnight in a massive sweep of the wiki.

The Gartagens also take up an unreasonable amount of room on the starmap for their importance currently, so there is greater imperative to deal with them. Some colonies will fall under a protectorate, others may be seized by colonial powers, and the rest may become a wild west of shooting and law of the gun. From the ashes, the grounds for new growth truly are laid sometimes.



CORE FACTIONS

I want to talk about some of the problems with SARP's core factions, since one of the main advocacy points is that we should retract support of new factions to develop our older ones.

I would be more inclined to agree if I felt that "developing" these core factions went in a direction that made them more valuable to the setting. I say this not because of any dislike of these factions, I say this because I feel these factions are boring.

Right now the major factions are literally "too big to fail", they cannot go to war with each other since all them require the complete destruction of their foes, they cannot afford to lose because it would mean their own destruction, and therefore they cannot afford to start wars with any faction even close to approaching their size. Instead we have this incestuous relationship of back-slapping coldly and trying to play super-happy friends.

Neither can they bully smaller factions due to their immense size dwarfing anything else on the star map. Politics in SARP are currently too brutish and direct to allow much in the way of proxy warfare, and since most plots are based in these large factions war by proxy doesn't add much value for the FM's of these large factions.

If we are to "develop" these factions, it should be development to regress from this shaky jenga tower we've created for ourselves. Lower the stakes, make failure non-lethal, and allow casual conflict to have some return.

At this point in time the major factions are literally untouchable by small factions. I have literally had high-placed people actually become angry at me because they perceived that I was attempting to compete on the technological scale with Yamatai. Misguided I know, but it was three days of effort to finally make them realize once and for all that such fears were unfounded.

I have never attempted to make anything for any other faction to compete in brute force strength to Yamataian tech, due to my aversion for interacting with Yamatai in any meta-political manner at all. But the more I thought about this incident the more I realized that I had tacitly been self-correcting myself to avoid having anything to do with Yamatai in setting.

This shouldn't have to happen. It will not get fixed by "developing" these factions more.



TL;DR

• New factions are being made by old folks, be careful how you treat them.
• Dead factions are usually only half-dead
• Core factions won't be fixed by "developing" them.

 

[Fred]

Back when I started here, the Lorath weren't conceived in the way they turned out to be. According to co-creator Tiffany, the main goal was to show off a new and unique race that would be able to join the Yamatai Star Empire and then just happen to become playable for Star Army plots.

The end result, of course, was wildly different.

But I don't think it's a bad idea, nor does it make it an untenable way of showing off a species while having the advantage of having a solid playerbase behind it. Some people here have created Abwehrans. How many of you would actually play Abwehrans as exchange officers in a Lorath-based plot? How many would play the Iroma in a Yamataian plot? How many would play Freespacers in a Nepleslian plot (actually, that's already going on, I think).

We have awesome character concept possibilities, but few finite platforms to employ them. But we do have the three hubs the DATASS treaty implemented in which we could push towards. The Democratic Imperium of Nepleslia already kind of acts like a protectorate to the Freespacers, along with a generally moderate attitude with a dash of gruff "start something with me and I will make sure to finish it". The Yamatai Star Empire is more a expansive force that aggressively gains territory and is willing to annex new species they meet into their empire, peaceably or forcefully - along with an enduring "if you're not with me, you'll possibly be against me in the future and I don't like it". Whereas the Lorath Matriarchy kind of represents a coalition of ingenious and enterprising independents whom have been extremely tenacious during a span of time they were more downtrodden and have actually shaped up into something that could be SARP's third major power.

Yeah, I just called the Lorath a major power. I'm not sure what's up with me, but after ten years of them being around making noise and flipping the bird to Wes, topping that off with the DATASS treaty, I think they may be there. They just need to be made to flex those muscles now.

Point is, in these three hubs, you already cover different mindsets and styles of organization. Someone not liking Yamatai could find a feasible home with the Lorath Matriarchy's allied coalition of indepedent powers. Or someone whom doesn't care for the effete Yamatai and the scruffy frontier Lorath with thier strange religion could sit better with the Nepleslians.

Face it, it's easier to create a character of an unique race and have a nice concept for him than it is to find a home for him or her. I know there was a time when the Star Army of Yamatai was a lot more multi-cultural. Now that we're not in a full-out period of war, species restriction matters a lot less than it did and we could able forge forward with encouraging multispecies crews rather than the rather homogenous trend which has been going on.

 

[Doshii Jun]

I'm the person who feared the Chelti tech, by the way. I don't fear my name being out there about it.

And I worked like hell to see DATA become a reality. No guilt there either. Better that than endless pissing matches.

 

[Riko]

I throw in my hat with Jimmy on this, It seems the smaller factions or up and coming factions would be laughable nuances if they ever tried to pick a fight with the big factions. With that being said it does deter people from wanting to create new factions and with that new Ideas.

Personally, I would say we look at what we have in the core factions and see what we could do with them internally to make new conflicts to draw in these other factions as allies or enemies. For example, the SAoY is made up of six different species whos to say that one of the species gets cheesed at not being represented fairly and threatens to split, getting backup from one of the smaller factions for support. This gives GMs something to do with the different species and characters in their plots as well as involving other smaller factions. This could also be an topic where a smaller faction tries to join the Neps or Yams but is denied and internal conflict from the varying races. Granted those are just ideas but it still allows for any new factions (if need be) to get a foot hold on the big stage.

 

[Tom]

I think we really need to look at this like we'd look at cleaning up an apartment.

So we have a huge amount of articles of varying quality on the site (ie: a mess). We need to take all of this and make three piles, as we'd do in any cleaning process.

1) Gotta keep it pile
2)Gotta throw it out pile
3) Wait on it for a week pile (If it doesn't move to #1 in this time, it goes to #2)

After we declutter the mess on our apartment floor, then we can work on doing the stuff to spruce up the apartment, like vacuuming, cleaning the dishes and windows, etc.

But until we get to a point where everything we have belongs to that first pile, we're going to just end up with more and more.

The big problem is how we determine what belongs in each pile. Right now, that's where we're suffering because people are reluctant to destroy things that are made with love.

This is a hoarder's mentality and is unhealthy, in my opinion. I may love my old books or DVDs, but if they're taking up space then they gotta go out.

Excise the emotion from the need and I think we can move in a healthy direction for the future. I've been of the opinion that a ton of articles need to just be slashed from the wiki for about... 6 years now. A good, clean reboot of a lot of things would accomplish so much, like a nice spring cleaning makes an apartment feel like new.

 

[paladinrpg]

I just wanted to point out that removing/deleting things from the wiki should be done carefully... one very impressive thing about SARP is its long history, and that aspect needs to be preserved in some way that treats it with respect, even if it is no longer directly relevant. Just like we have museums in real life, perhaps aggregating the articles in an abridged form in some type of archive subgrouping or tag at the top (to let people know it is an older element) could be a possibility worth considering.

 

[Jimmy]

I'm the person who feared the Chelti tech, by the way. I don't fear my name being out there about it.

And I worked like hell to see DATA become a reality. No guilt there either. Better that than endless pissing matches.

Didn't want to mention you without asking you. Besides, that was a misunderstanding and no harm came of it anyway.

DATA is duct tape around the jenga tower, but it's still jenga.

 

[Doshii Jun]

DATA is duct tape around the jenga tower, but it's still jenga.

That's an opinion. Considering the effort put in, I think you undervalue its strength.

 

[CadetNewb]

To be honest guys, I believe we shouldn't even consider having a moratorium on new factions, or think about eradicating old ones.

In the article that @Wes linked, it's only a small part of it, and quite frankly, everything else in that article is far more important. Far, far more. Especially since a new player only needs to know about the core factions to do perfectly fine - everything else is just whipped cream, nuts and cherries on top. The article talks about how important it is to have rich histories and intertwining relationships between factions, and we already have that in spades. Instead, it's just a matter of actually putting it to use, which I believe to be our absolute, most definitive problem we have here at the site. Despite how tied together major factions are In-Character/Story Wise, it's all nothing but self-contained bubbles RP wise. There's very little actual interaction between them. It's incredibly difficult to have a faction with an axe to grind regarding another to actually act on that, and even on a small scale that wouldn't rock the boat, for an example. Meanwhile, some factions are monolithic, and have little or no cracks for GMs to exploit and create problems for their players to solve.

It's borderline, if not outright, verboten to have Yamatai, Nepleslia and Lor to try and work together while also pissing in each other's drinks when they think the other isn't looking for an example. No playing DATASS Jenga like Jimmy says - sorry Doshii, but having it wobble a bit so players can heroically buttress it is important. Tossing random ideas out to give even more examples, the very same goes with having some rivalry between various samurai houses - players don't get to participate in this infighting because of how dominant the Ketsurui Samurai are. We hardly hear of any others. From what I understand, players don't get to fight for or against a Hidden Neko Ninja Village either since GMs' hands are tied regarding that. Getting mercenary action is also tough, since it's outright banned in one of the major factions despite players being interested.

There's a lot of red tape we're not supposed to cross, and I can only guess as to why, especially since it's doing us a great deal of harm. As Wes has pointed out, our numbers have hardly grown over the years, which

In the end of the day though, I suspect that the outcomes of any GM's plans being unknown to FMs of the factions involved may play a part in this red tape; if that's the case, setting up a more formal framework for various GMs and FMs to work in would be what we need. That way, none of us would be scared of our hard-work being irreparably damaged.

 

[Aendri]

I think the new FM Rights may go a decent way towards fixing those problems, Cadet. At this point, it's more a question of how long until FM's start exercising them and working with people more directly.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Pretty late to the party here, but just felt like bringing up one thing that never really got mentioned; Random non-humanoid characters submitted by newcomers, sort of the baby version of new player races.

As a proviso to this next bit, I am in no way saying that I have the influence to personally create or manage this on SA at the minute. I know from experience that these kind of broad strokes are frowned upon, so this isn't a formal design proposal. But it does sort of seem like there is massive room for some kind of halo covenant-style "a dozen races in one" faction, one that solves two really big problems at once; The massive hurdles getting non-humanoid characters accepted and the comparative lack of non-humanoid races that even exist in the RP.

Consider a big mushy alliance of mercenaries, or refugees of some kind, that don't require massive species backstories, but give the opportunity for such things to be built upon later. OOC the faction could be easily kept organised, developing extremely unique ideas on the fly in a really positive environment, at the same time as weeding out the special snowflake mentality that might emerge. IC the FM would intentionally keep them a hodge-podge and politically disorganized affair that would never directly choose the threaten the major factions, also effectively setting the ground rules for those species places within the universe in one fell swoop.

I understand the intention behind the policy of mostly counting them as androids or genetically modified eccentrics, since it attempts to get them involved with the community as a whole, but I've always kinda questioned the logic behind that. They can't fit into the power armor of any of the major factions anyway, so their RP opportunities are really rather limited in terms of getting into instant action. The "mysterious traveler from beyond the edges of known space" makes them a bonne fide alien, but basically just demands they become independent too, since any particularly unique personality or physiological traits are kinda just going to play at odds with the mentality of the big three as well, making it kind of a non-option for getting a character approved without gutting it.

On the other hand, actual non-humanoid alien factions are still kind of a rarity. They are something that the wiki mentions SA needs more of several times, at the same time as being something I've been personally been told to avoid creating in the past, specifically because no other players would want to play them, or be able to emphasize... Which is a completely valid point. I mean, making something truly unique is useless if everybody does it on their own little isolated planets, and it stays a tiny little community of like two-three people in the very best case scenario.

But doesn't all of that just seem like a really obtuse situation for something that quite a few new players are clearly attracted to the prospect of? I mean, it's a sci-fi RP, aren't FUBAR alien characters kind of supposed to be a staple?

Know the likeliness of me getting completely shot down for these kind of concepts are high, but yeah, I honestly just feel like this could solve something that has seemed like a systemic problem with recruiting new members for a long time, to me. Rather than constantly smashing up and throwing away random hard-fought player faction ideas and completely throwing them out, it channels all that positive creative energy into one place.

 

[Talonis Wolf]

I haven't been around long, but I do think there is a way for the main factions to 'absorb' the smaller factions over time while adding to the setting and giving them a chance to return or fight if there is interest- have the main, more active, or notable factions fight proxy wars through and within the smaller factions.

For example:

Major Faction AA has a disagreement with Faction A. Tensions rise and escalate into conflict. Seeing this, Major Faction BB has the option to back Faction A militarily, through supplies and training, or through Faction B as a proxy.

This allows several possibilities, which can mix into various possibilities depending on Real Life circumstance and decisions as well as those made in the Role Play itself:



-Faction AA absorbs Faction A through blatant victory (non-disputed status faction absorbs/merges disputed status)

-Faction BB absorbs Faction B through an alliance/politics (non-disputed absorbs disputed,again)

-Factions A & B end up uniting to avoid being manipulated (those in charge of the 'disputed status' factions agreed to unite to avoid being lost or absorbed, one hands control of their faction to another.)

-Faction AA or BB absorbs/merges with BOTH Factions A & B (use to destabilize a Major Faction like, say, Yamatai to add depth and options)

-Status Quo (All parties keep their original forms, gain depth and history)

And this is just one example... think of what you could come up with. Even if someone returns after a hiatus and protests, youcould encourage them to attempt a 'fight for freedom scenario' or have the controlling faction go through the process of slowly granting that faction it's independence (and the protesting party more and more control of the former faction until it returns to the point of being an individual faction, in a sort of rehabilitation process).

Thoughts?

 

[paladinrpg]

To add a little bit to what @Talonis Wolf said, the former UOC for example was absorbed back into its parent empire Yamatai after it fell. Another good example of this might be what happened with Elysia eventually becoming a suzerainty of Yamatai, or the Freespacers being now effectively a protectorate of Nepleslia. All of these areas are slowly beginning to have a resurgence now, and could eventually go in the directions you described. Former UOC in particular is my focus to regain a bit of its pride back, and yes, indeed, I have plans for sorts of proxy wars being fought within its sphere of influence and diplomacy from its unique position...

Oh, and I'm all for more "alien" aliens. When I get more time, I intend to finish the Kelunda up into a very aggressive crystalline lifeform with many variations that are far from humanoid in shape (more spikey and/or tetrahedral).