A thought regarding the direction of the game

For myself, if we're going to restart, I'd rather switch to a different system, and if we're going to stay in the KC system, I'd rather not restart.
But if we are going to do a fresh start and still do KC, a thought occurrs. One of the complaints about this game has been that we don't have the player base to support the courts. Having 8 or 10 people in court positions directing the actions of 4 or 5 feels a little silly. Allan suggested we do a game set pre-codex so that we don't have courts positions to worry about filling.
Another idea that occurred to me is that game could notionally be set in a large city with many fallen, and the player base could represent the fallen occupying some district or collection of neighborhoods within a larger civitas. We might or might not have representation on the courts, but most court positions could be filled by NPCs who don't necessarily need to make appearances, but orders might come down the pipe from them.
Some other system of governance with more attention to detail at the bottom level might be necessary, like for instance the player region might be required to have a knight from either court to coordinate their martial efforts with the rest of the civitas. Or maybe not.
There are disadvantages there in that it removes a lot of player control and creates a bunch of extra work for the storyteller, but if people really want to play Kingdom Come and really don't want to worry about filling the courts it might be something to consider.

On the court system, I have played games where the majority of the courts are cast as NPC's. Alan will remember the game 'Paradise Lost' in Edmonton, where the Kings were relatively uninvolved with the city for a good chunk of the chronicle unless something Particularly Interesting occurred. It made room for all the little people to do their stuff without the constant worrying about the state of the courts, and the constant changing of roles like we have seen from time to time in Providence.

I am not against the idea of having some of the court positions filled by NPCs but i think that some should also be given to players. that is, if there is only a few players. if the base expands then maybe some of the players would eventually take those positions from the NPCs. I think pre-Codex might be difficult simply due to the hatred of the factions toward each other, and it might be difficult to get everyone to play the same conviction or whatever.

I have found, in general, with NPC authority figures that it tends to swing towards one of two problems: either a) the players feel powerless because they figure anything important just needs to be kicked up the ladder to more powerful NPCs, or b) the players feel the NPCs are useless because they never end up doing anything useful. If you have active, useful NPCs the PCs feel sidelined, if you don't then the PCs feel there is no point in having the NPCs around. It is certainly possible to avoid some of these pitfalls, but it is difficult.

For myself, if there are going to be NPC authority figures, then it needs to means the important plots can't be at the same level as whatever level those authority figures operate on. If you've got NPC Courts ruling a Civitas, then you can't have your important plots be city-wide - they have to be much more narrowly focused.

I was thinking of doing something pretty much like Mihr's neighbourhood suggestion for Vampire once, and I do think it would work very well in KC too. Say that the PCs are maybe 1/5th of the total population of the city, that most of the authority figures are NPCs(though some could be PCs), BUT that the PCs are the entirty of the Vampires/Fallen/whatever in one specific neighbourhood. Thus, they are theoretically part of a larger set-up, but all the plots are focused on the local stuff. There might be 80 Fallen in New York, but there are only 17 in Staten Island - ie: the population of Staten Island is entirely made up of the PCs. Thus, if there be issues on Staten Island, for the most part the Kings of New York will tell the PCs to deal with it. If PCs are all like "Why aren't all these other Fallen helping us with shit?", the answer is "Because there is also problematic shit happening in Queens, the Bronyx, etc, etc"(and that has to be true - this type of set-up doesn't work if for some reason Staten Island gets all the world-destroying plots, and every place else just whacks the occasional angel). In this type of setting, Prelates become the authority figures, really.

On a similar note - the original KC concept I was going to run back in the day after my last Vampire game(and which I would have ran, had Trent actually gotten me the rules when he said he was going to ) had the players taking the role of sort of an "expeditionary force" of different Choirs and Murders coming to a now-deserted city to figure out the weird supernatural shit going on there. They would all theoretically be loyal to their Kings back in their home cities - and different Congregations might come from different cities, so there would be not just a "Divine vs Infernal" split, but also a tension between "The boys from Edmonton vs those bastards from Winnipeg". Players would have the option of telling their masters back home to screw themselves and forming their own Hierarchy in their new city if they found they could work together, or they could just continue answering up the chain to their different Kings if they preferred. My aim with that concept was going to be that although individual characters might be inexperienced or new, the Congregations themselves would mostly be fairly old and experienced in the War - but at the same time, having problems back home that meant they were willing to take the risk in traveling somewhere dangerous. I sort of liked the idea of having more cagey veteran Fallen for the most part. Sort of a strange "Dirty Dozen" done Kingdom Come style.

If I ever actually end up running KC, that is still probably what I'll do.

Anyway, just throwing out different perspectives on how things can be done, even in the base KC setting.

Bal wrote:-snip-

What I meant, but with better words.

For me, it has to do with the fact that Court members can't be part of a congregation (with an exception or two) and we barely have enough players to form both Courts. Yes, that doesn't mean there isn't interaction, pseudo-congregations and general havoc, but it seems to cut into it somewhat. We spend an awful lot of time trying to fill positions and shifting things around. I dunno, maybe that's good - it creates plot that can be addressed at the game rather than backstory - but the main concern seemed to be small player-base + Courts, not just Courts.

With respect to city-wide actions, we seem to be having more success with that recently. I think it's just the way things fell out, though, with only one active regent, who worked well with the knight on the opposite side for several critical months of demon-hunting, patrolling, and general scheming. We had lots of people willing to help. This might fall apart now that said knight hates said regent... but that will be part of the fun. Anyway. Ahem. My point was going to be that it's very hard to organize all those people, even when they've said they want to help, because in real life we've got things more important than devils and nephilim, and unless the plan is set in stone *at census*, things tend to fall apart. I don't really think it's a question of these players acting in a particular manner that doesn't support the system.

Another thought that your comments spark is the number of actions we get. You're right: we can't do stuff for the courts *and* do stuff for ourselves. I would have been up to so much more evil if I didn't have to work so hard not *dying* every month... you know what I mean? If you're going to be part of the city-wide Hunt and you need to spend a few points on a rehabilitate, that's basically it. If we wanted more player-created action, perhaps a little more Effort each month would go a looong way.

Real-life is important and trumps gaming, agreed.

Saying that that is it hard to organise... I don't buy it. Put up a post saying what the action is and whom you need to be in on it -- both IC to describe it and OoC to spell it out so that everyone is on the same page. If forums aren't someone's thing then it isn't too hard to ask for email or facebook information. As a worse-and-all-other-things-have-been-exhausted last case, information might be able to be passed through Jill to an individual, as she has all the email addresses. I've had no problem coordinating actions when I've actually received interest from someone in being involved.

I personally don't think that more Effort is a good thing. If you want to take actions that need more marks then do group actions and/or ask for aid. It's not just about creating more player driven plot but about people getting involved in the plot that is out there so that a few people aren't doing it all -- aren't forced into doing it all to the exclusion of personal actions. It's a matter of prioritizing what is important to you in a given month and normally 10 Effort is plenty -- unless you aren't getting help with things that are prioritized for you by your position and whose mark burden you must bear alone.

Erm. Are you suggesting creating a house rule that would allow players to spend more than 10 (Effort + SP) on their downtime actions? If so, you should suggest it in the Rules section.

One thing about the court structure that was discussed an awful lot amongst the past Infernal administration was to merge positions; ie, a court could get along just fine with a King, a knight, and a bishop or whatever combination of figure heads that the character base can support. This may help with the notion that nearly everyone is in a position. But really, it does little to get others more involved in the game or in downtime. With respect to congregations and positions, I feel there is little that a formal congregation adds...a bishop can still live with the queen and they can still participate in side-scenes and downtime together, regardless that they cannot officially be in a murder together. In fact, it may work the opposite way - if everyone had a position it would provide something to do during downtime and provide some direction for interacting with plot.

One of my pet peeves with group actions is that sometimes people will stand up in census, announce that there is a group action to do X, and then not follow through with that. More than once I've ended up being a 'wolf pack of one' on a supposed group action. It's not a huge deal, but it can be frustrating and disappointing. Especially for those in the court positions as their effort tends to get tossed towards actions that the position is responible for.

With respect to the direction of the game...or LARPs in general, I think I prefer games to have one over-plot and a couple of minor plot threads. This set up gives people multiple opportunities to engage in various aspects of what is going on...if you don't like the over-plot, grab onto one of the other threads. Granted, there is a chance that certain elements of the plot will go unaddressed, but really this is bound to occur as not everyone will want to be involved in everything.

Not really a formal suggestion, so much as throwing it out there and seeing whether anyone else feels the same way. It would probably require more than a house rule - it would unbalance other things - so unless there was overwhelming support, it's probably not worth considering.

Why have a Court system at all? I've never understood where the need or desire for Court Positions come from, and have always assumed that it was a bad holdover from Vampire.

Every decision could be made through direct democracy. Infernal able to screw over the Divine because they have more people? Give each Conviction a Veto. It's a system that would allow each person to participate as much or as little as they liked in the politics and decision-making of the game while still allowing plenty of room for drama in the creation of factions and in discussions over the resolution of important issues.

I agree that it can be frustrating to hold a court position, be responsible for certain downtime activities due to that position, and also find effort/SP to devote to your own projects. However, that also provides oportunity to become involved with other characters as you learn to delegate to your friends, congregation, or others interested in what you're undertaking. There are many ways to involve others in the downtime system, either through cooperation or collusion, in order to accomplish your goals.

In fact, I think (with a couple glaring failings) that KC has one of the best LARP downtime systems going. Mostly because there a considerable degree of parity across the character base. To wax nostalgic for a moment, in V:tM it is incredibly difficult for a neonate or new character to go head to head with their promogen or the prince and get away with anything because, more often than not, the elder character had multiple influences maxed out. In KC it is possible for nearly any character to accomplish any given undertaking. Sure there are certain characters that are geared towards certain activities but, by and large, it is the most equitable system that I've played. And for that, I really enjoy the secular system (with the exception of machination, which is just plain stoopid and broken - but that's another rant).

Daniel wrote:Why have a Court system at all? I've never understood where the need or desire for Court Positions come from, and have always assumed that it was a bad holdover from Vampire.

I think the main purposes of Court positions are a) to provide positions of prestige to scheme over, and b) provide a manageable yet still accessible way to organize large numbers of players. If you have a Civitas with 8 Court members, 5 Deistical, and then 3 Choirs of 4 and 3 Murders of 4, all of a sudden having that structure makes a lot more sense. I think a lot of the idea behind having a fairly elaborate system and a large ruling body might have been to provide more access to the players - having 8-10(or more, depending on multiple Knights) people in the power clique provides a lot more ins for a play group of 40 as opposed to Vampire where there's really only going to be a core 3-5 positions that matter(and are usually quite locked into their power bases).

I don't think the court system is a holdover from Vampire.

There are reasons why I think this, and I'm quite enjoying this discussion, so that's all I'll say right now and I'll just let y'all keep talking about it.

Political systems that work well and are put together for efficiency, IC, tend to make for poor political games OOC. The interesting parts are usually where the system breaks.

(Sort of like in Nobilis, where the Windflower Law is Thou Shalt Not Love. From a game design perspective, the prohibition against Love isn't meant to exclude it from the game - it is meant to draw focus to Love in the game, make it important, make it the focus of plots and something worthy of conflict. So, too, a well-designed IC political system makes for ugly politics. )