As much as i like to propose a fully developed idea, this idea is too large to do so.
I hope that the general drift of this proposal is well liked and that a group of willing enthousiasts will help to develop (parts of) this idea for the betterment of the game.
In our game the roles of the noble or merchant is not well developed. This has resulted that these roles are blended into one and thus creating a predictable model “us against them”.
I wil try to develop the three roles a bit by adding role specific boons.
Starting points:
All players should be able to play any role or a mixture of them
All choices should have consequences
role chance has to be possible
Roles :
Pure roles : pirate, merchant and noble.
blended roles: any mix of the three roles.
Boons:
Each pure role will have 6 boons (6 is an arbitrary number) which are beneficial to their role. A boon can be a permission, a reward or an advantage.
the total number of boons one can have is 6 (equal to the number of pure role boons)
the total of boons a player has is based on his ‘score’; boons are granted in steps of 200.000 points, but never more than 6 in total. A score of over 1.2 million serves as a buffer and allows to keep boons related to that score while pursuing boons from another role.
The three roles are somewhat in conflict with each other. This is represented in three scales.
The pirate vs merchant scale (shown as bloodprice vs fame)
the pirate vs noble scale (bloodprice/hostility vs influence) and
The merchant vs noble scale (fame vs influence)
the top triangle is the present system where merchant and noble almost overlap. the triangle at the bootom represents this idea. Limited nations (up to 50 fictious ones will do) will help this proposal. Influence has to be given not only to a port , but to a nation as well. When a player changes his nation he will transfer only 1/3 of his influence to his new nation. This implies that each nation will have a scale to merchants and pirates. (in a similar way as hostilty is recored per nation.) Noble boons are based on that players total influence from all nations.
A players action will influens his place on those scales. Either moving towards one or to the other end.
to obtain boons from other roles a player needs to have a surplus of points in his first role and than build up points for his next set of boons. E.g. I want to have 2 merchant boons and a pirate boon. To get them I first build up over 600.000 fame points and than do pirate stuff to gain bloodprice points. Each bloodprice points will lower an equal amount of fame points (or influence point depending on the action) so, to get the 200.000 bloodprice points for the boon, I will loose 200.000 fame points. In the end I have over 200.000 bloodprice and at least 400.000 fame points. That allows me to switch 1 merchant boon for 1 pirate boon.
Each player has to be careful to keep his scales balanced to his liking. A player who becomes too much a merchant loses his other boons, become too much a noble and etc.
