Fwurg

[Mercury]

At this time, we have a lot of NPC worlds. I'm probably going to phase a few of them out, but I'm not ready yet to eliminate them altogether, especially not while the game rules and the community is still developing.

To simplify the matter however, I plan on introducing political parties, composed of multiple worlds with similar interests that form a voting block together. This would make the NPC's much more manageable in many regards without causing too many shifts in the balance of power.

Political parties would have clear unifying goals and it would cause less need for individual exchanges with every NPC regarding any votes that come up. However, they would be harder to 'bribe', because you cannot just buy one or two votes, but you either get the entire block or nothing at all.

I think they make sense, as such voting blocks are basically what players do as well ^_^

What do people think of this idea?

[Veolian Commonwealth]

While I do like the idea, I'm afraid that this might add even more of an us-vs-them attitude into current situation. That is something that I would really like to avoid. The game is already competitive enough without having powerblocks of NPCs throwing around their weight.

I do like the idea of having less work for admin, it appears admin has a bit a problem with the zounds NPCs on admin's hands -- maybe this can be done without a power block feel to it?

[Mercury]

I am not opposed to some PC vs NPC disagreement within the Union. I think its healthy to have some competitiveness there, so long as it does not turn ugly (which I do not expect). In fact, it'd be hard to make any interesting storylines without conflict. That's not to say there will not be conflict with outside forces, mind you.

I think a lot of your worry in regards to the power of NPC blocks is unwarranted. NPC's will not become a monolithic faction. I am currently thinking of 4 or 5 blocks of 3-4 NPC's each with different ideals and goals. That should be both manageable for players and game master alike.

[Praetorian Empire]

I think it is a nice idea to divide the NPC's into blocks. Is it possible for an NPC to be in more then one block? It would be nice to have this information available as public information since we currently do not know much about the NPC relations.

[Mercury]

Yes, the idea is that this information would be publicly available. Additionally, each block would have certain core beliefs also established and publicly known - which should give some indication of the NPC goals and relationships.

I haven't decided yet on the exact form of the blocks or how many an NPC can be part of, but the original idea is 1 block per NPC. At the very least this will hold true on individual issues. If there are multiple configurations, PC's will know beforehand who's in what group on any particular issue.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

I'm fine with this idea. It sounds like a good way to reduce the workload for the admin.