I think I get the whole

"Our nations are so protected by the people/nature that anyone trying to invade it would essentially commit suicide."

thing. Not all that special, I've seen it hundreds of times.

But riddle me this.

"The Harvest was bad this year, some people are starving in X region."
"There was a comet in the night sky, people call it an omen of the end of days."
"The snow melted too quickly and rivers left their bed."
"Drought"
"Locusts"
"Large mine is becoming exhausted"
"Lack of gold or silver for minting new coins"
"Plague"

How do you counter that?

I think random events should either be acts of gods, things that the players obviously couldn't have any control over, or have some foreshadowing. Not making a post about how barbarians come and enslave some people, but say that scouts have spotted a bunch of foreigners marauding, etc and let players deal with this.

The thing is that while random events can put certain players at a disadvantage, so will the divisions of people living in wonderland where every day is sunny, the waves are small, the harvest bountiful and so forth and those who live in a more realistic setting. I don't know people in this thread, but I doubt a lot of people would in a war say

-The war is going badly
-The morale is poor
-AND the harvest was shit, so people are starving

That or say that part of an invasion fleet was lost in a storm. It keeps things interesting, unexpected things can happen and let's not forget one crucial thing: The notion of 'Wage total war & genocide' isn't implemented (Or at least anyone implementing it is a dick), so what if you lose a war? Maybe you'll lose some territories, maybe you'll be completely invaded and your population reduced to slavery or forced to migrate out of your land. But this isn't a game over, it's just a change of gameplay, maybe the next grand leader supreme of the world will be you.

Wernher said
I think I get the whole"Our nations are so protected by the people/nature that anyone trying to invade it would essentially commit suicide."thing. Not all that special, I've seen it hundreds of times.But riddle me this."The Harvest was bad this year, some people are starving in X region.".... words.....The thing is that while random events can put certain players at a disadvantage, so will the divisions of people living in wonderland where every day is sunny, the waves are small, the harvest bountiful and so forth and those who live in a more realistic setting. I don't know people in this thread, but I doubt a lot of people would in a war say-The war is going badly-The morale is poor-AND the harvest was shit, so people are starving..... More words.....so what if you lose a war? Maybe you'll lose some territories, maybe you'll be completely invaded and your population reduced to slavery or forced to migrate out of your land. But this isn't a game over, it's just a change of gameplay, maybe the next grand leader supreme of the world will be you.

I totally agree. I don't like the barbarian random event/military random event. I have a set of ideas on what s going to happen in my nation from my own little events and such ( because I enjoy the struggle bus ) but the whole "can't come in" is apart of my nation" its supposed to make my people ignorant of other nations and such. Buuut I agree with bad harvest, and plague, and bad omens I totally agree with those. Its just we don't have a way for raging barbarians to be fairly administered. Also i am basically raging barbarians for sov

I believe that if it's going to be physical/grave events it's need to be 'pre-announced' before it happens, like these super bandit raids, but I believe psychological events like the 'falling star' could be random.

Also updated map

Yeah, while random events may be the best thing ever to you lot, I still can't stomach them. I don't mind bad things occurring to my own faction (because that's life), but it's the thought of some random and completely illogical thing happening to it that seriously rubs me the wrong way. I mean seriously, a drought in a rain forest? Granted, that was merely an example, but still.

I've seen random events attempted before in various nation-based roleplays; they were handled relatively poorly more or less, they felt shoe-horned into the NRP, and they made fuck-all sense. Hell, I had one GM literally mention that my nation somehow acquired spaceships when it was a tribalisitc shithole situated on one planet that had been blasted back to the Stone Age via the righteous fury of the atomic bomb. Seriously, I'm talking 20 generic space frigates out of thin fucking air.

The logic is completely absent. I also quit that RP in a heartbeat.

As you people are adept writers (at least, this is what I'm assuming), I'm going to go off of the assumption that no one in this thread will make a Mary Sue faction free of grit or character. Trust in the ability of the writer, not some random game mechanic that really isn't even needed.

Asta, you have my vote c':

In full agreement, ASTA.

I have nothing against random events, I can do either.

I just wanna start this rp reaaallly badly :(

Trust does not factor. I do not believe people are powergaming when they forget a possible famine, they just don't think about it. Random events make the story more relatable as nobody's plans go off without a hitch.

Doublepost: Can we just assume the world is earth sized?

^yes please

So Boerd said
Trust does not factor. I do not believe people are powergaming when they forget a possible famine, they just don't think about it. Random events make the story more relatable as nobody's plans go off without a hitch.

If you're talking about plans of conquest, you can achieve this by simply collaborating with someone for whatever war you have in mind, with the execution and outcome of said skirmish being entirely in the hands of those RPers involved in it. Since this thing isn't running on pure RNG goodness, your brilliant military maneuvers and high-powered soldiers mean relatively little in the grand scheme of things.

If you play things out realistically, this RE nonsense isn't required.

So Boerd said
Trust does not factor. I do not believe people are powergaming when they forget a possible famine, they just don't think about it. Random events make the story more relatable as nobody's plans go off without a hitch.

Trust absolutely factors, how else are these "Random" events to be truly random? Random events also do fuck-all to make the story more relatable. If people can't honestly make their nations more relatable by doing these things on their own, then they need to learn how. As ASTA said, we're all experienced NRPers here, and we should know how to make our nations look more realistic and relatable. Random events are never the way to do this, as that requires a great deal of trust in the GM, and a truly impartial party to level these random events.

That's the bottom-line here, in that random events benefit no one, in either story or game, and are best left as they were. Just someone's thought for the RP. If this was a trait-based and statistic-driven NRP, then yeah, you lot would have a fair point in Random events, but as it stands, the RP is NOT a stat-driven RP, and it is NOT a trait-based RP.

Alfhedil said
Trust absolutely factors, how else are these "Random" events to be truly random? Random events also do fuck-all to make the story more relatable. If people can't honestly make their nations more relatable by doing these things on their own, then they need to learn how. As ASTA said, we're all experienced NRPers here, and we should know how to make our nations look more realistic and relatable. Random events are never the way to do this, as that requires a great deal of trust in the GM, and a truly impartial party to level these random events.That's the bottom-line here, in that random events benefit no one, in either story or game, and are best left as they were. Just someone's thought for the RP. If this was a trait-based and statistic-driven NRP, then yeah, you lot would have a fair point in Random events, but as it stands, the RP is NOT a stat-driven RP, and it is NOT a trait-based RP.

I for one, trust the GM. He's the GM after all.

My sides.

Wernher said
I for one, trust the GM. He's the GM after all.

Being GM doesn't earn you automatic trust, and I for one sincerely question anyone who automatically trusts someone just because they're GM.

Anyway, I'm all open for unfortunate things befalling my nation; I'm known for creating factions that exhibit dismal societies and that have dystopian elements to them (I for one believe such factions breed the hardiest peoples). I actually ran a faction in a fantasy roleplay that consisted of a small collective of mutated humans that warred against a quasi-sentient island that sported sadistic personality traits, which translated to it creating unusually-potent monsters that laid siege to the fortress cities of the people.

In the end, they were more or less slated to lose that war. As you can guess, the conditions in these fortress cities were piss-poor.

The random event stuff?

Nah.

This isn't a threat or anything (because this thread will live on regardless of what I do), but if that stuff gets green-lighted, I'm out lol.

Surely it's the GM's role to guide the course of the RP - even in a nation RP?

LadyAdanae said
Surely it's the GM's role to guide the course of the RP - even in a nation RP?

There's a massive difference between guiding a thread, and Random Events.

All in all, I'm in the same boat as ASTA. I'm not keen on sticking around if Random Events get pushed through.