Dawn of Worlds Discussion Thread

Um, Snowy, the low power bonus caps at 3. Not that that stops you from doing what you did.

Also I think we need to settle whether Command Avatar covers the cost of what they do, or not. 'Cause Taco and Snowy budgetted differently.

-headdesks-

Fixing nao

^^ Don't think it does.

Not that I would want to stop the corruption of the race, but wouldn't Jeff's action be corrupt civilization rather than city? (Not that it matters right now)

Could be interesting seeing the team-ups, though. I could see Besak working to counter the chaos of the shapechanger while using the discord to unite the non-good Sky Folk into followers of the Sun God.

Which makes me wonder - is it just the Create Race that gets an optional free Purify/Corrupt, or would Sub-Races / Orders get them too? Specifically off of what the base was (for example, a corrupt order of the original Avians being neutral - or a purified order of a purified sub-race of the current Avians having a +2).

As for Command Avatar, we've now had the Avians created, corrupted and purified for just the cost of the command so far.

edited 15th Jan '12 5:14:38 PM by Passer

Subraces have alignments, but I don't believe that Orders do. Orders act within the context of the race itself, whereas a subrace is an entirely new race—so if Race X is aligned evil, then the fisherman's guild or the local church is probably going to be evil, but if a god decided to create a purified subrace then those same Orders would have the same alignment as their subrace.

That being said, I think that subraces don't have to start out from the parent race's alignment. They can if you want to—if a race is +4 you can make a +5 aligned subrace, but you can also make a -1 aligned one as well. this, to me, is for the purposes of making distinct and interesting subraces, so people won't have to spend exorbitant amounts of power just to make their subrace evil when that was their goal all along.

On the other hand, an avatar can only perform one action per turn, so by using them to corrupt or purify a race, that immediately means that the player who does can't use their avatar to do anything else that turn. So it's not like it's an imbalanced system. At least, I don't think.

Exactly - the combination of precedent and the one Command Avatar per turn limit makes it a lot less overpowered. In fact the ability of the avatar to use Create and Command Order seems to suggest the Command Avatar cost only (admittedly weakly) unless the Avatar (rather than the player) who created the Order counts as the creating player for Command Order.

Seems to make sense. Though the same race could (potentially) have a church to both Codex and Besak - which makes them having the same alignment seem a bit odd. In a more general sense, I'm thinking of something like a good race (or even neutral) with an evil church or a neutral/evil race with a good trader's guild.

Well, the alignments pf the gods themselves are really only just there for giggles—they mean nothing in the actual mechanics of the game.

edited 15th Jan '12 8:25:40 PM by Chubert

Uh, doublepost to alert Luthen that he seems to have accidentally undone the plains on the end of Morality's island, as well as a patch of Malunall's mountains.

edited 15th Jan '12 9:17:03 PM by Chubert

Oops, will fix

So the wording's not quite as good as I would have liked, but the basic idea's there. Besak went to the city and spread information about the creation of the Avians and Celestia, placing emphasis on the importance of the Sun to the creation of Celestia - the effect was to gain a sect of Avian of his own, through his Sun domain.

It didn't affect the map, so I'm hoping that it's alright to not update it. Though while I'm mentioning it, I think Arane's Ice Sculpture is still in its starting hex as well as its new one, but I wasn't completely sure.

edited 16th Jan '12 3:46:28 AM by Passer

Okay, so who wants to start the second age? We get three people, we're good, so that's me and two more people.

Yeah, I'm game. Second age seems to be more optimal for what we're doing now anyway, since Malunall can actually feasibly afford what he wants.

I'll add vote #3 then. I like where I ended the first age.

Full steam ahead, I say.

By the way, I can't post until evening.

edited 16th Jan '12 10:40:34 AM by SnowyFoxes

I wouldn't mind keeping in the first age, but at this point it doesn't really matter since there's already a majority in favor of going on ahead anyway.

Current population of the world:

• Winged Elves
• Robots

What's going to pop up next?

Normal people?

Strangely enough, I find it more plausible that the first age takes place in a shorter time than the second age. The first age is the whole "God created earth in seven days" shtick, whereas the second age is the gradual development of technology and civilization, which would naturally take longer.

Question - the rules mention that Orders might be created for specific purposes, and lists among them countering other Orders. If I wanted to create an order who's purpose was, among other things, keeping out the influence of people I didn't trust to give commands to the Avians, would I need to create an order that lists that as among it's responsibilities and then give them a command to discredit and dull the influence of the selected Order to the point where they don't have an influence anymore, or how else would I go about doing that?

Lessee...

You wouldn't have to pay the additional "Command Order" cost. Simultaneously, creating an inquisition will not wipe out the opposing cult unless you raise an army to march against it. As long as all you have are your words, they can always talk back. Once you put them to the sword, that changes.

So yeah. I mean, you're proposing an inquisition-type organization. Its creation will reduce the hegemony rival churches have but will not eliminate it outright.

What about discrediting them? Based on whole 'truth' aspect to the Order, combined with the nature of what actually happened, wouldn't it be enough for the Avatar that helped create them (and that the argument the Order is based on) to come by and tell the rival order 'stop being a bunch of idiots, dudes!' and beat them back with the full Truth that Besak's followers are supposed to adhere to? If Celestia puts them straight, they're either going to be faced with the prospect of lying about what happened (which goes against what Besak's followers are supposed to do and the way that Besak runs things) or be left without an honest response.

Those are good arguments. You're free to make them. That doesn't mean that 1. Passer isn't allowed to respond, and 2. that his cult is going to be wiped out. It will still have control over a portion of the Avian population. "You're free to command other player's civilizations" is right there in the rules; it's how the game is meant to be played. Passer's PC is a God—he can get followers, especially when he's being a sneaky bastard and not revealing the Evil part of Lawful Evil. Once Besak has followers—devoted followers—you can't just argue your way out of their faith.

Remember the next part of that line in the rules—"Turnabout is fair play."

What this pretty much means mechanics wise is that no, there is nothing in the rulebooks saying that you can completely eliminate the control one cult has over a race. Reduce, yes, but there's nothing in the gameplay that represents reduced control. Maybe if it was a really good reason why, like an explicit God of Evil marching in and performing blood sacrifices then yeah, you'd get +1 modifiers in conflict between the two cults.

edited 16th Jan '12 10:32:05 PM by Chubert

Woah woah woah double post because I just remembered something; you already have a cult following Morality among the Avians. The race creator gets that cult for free. Unless you want to specifically create a new Order that's like an Inquisition or something...

That's what I'm talking about - creating a new Order specifically to help keep the Avians on the 'right path' so that I don't have rivals I don't trust trying to get them to do things like create armies and marching them out against my allies and the like. PR, Propaganda (for lack of a better term), a war of information and knowledge, etc.

No, I don't expect the rival Order would be wiped out entirely, but I figured that over the course of a 100 years that each round of the 2nd age is represented by, it would, for the purpose of the game, be eliminated on account of the cult being defeated to the point where they're incapable of having enough of an influence on the people of the city where they'd serve any purpose for giving the city orders, forcing someone else to spend points to bring them back up to strength if they want to use them. Especially if the Avatar that's central to the original argument is actually there to help refute the argument she's supposedly a central part of.

edited 16th Jan '12 10:57:40 PM by SpaceJawa

Uh, no. Not good enough. Besak's cult isn't even discrediting Celestia or Morality. They can't even do that, because it'd be a lie. If you're trying to get into an information war with the freakin' God of Truth, then that's not compelling enough. They will still have influence—that's my ruling.

Because this is kinda difficult, would you mind popping into the chat and discussing it with me there? It's much easier that way to work this out.