Forums of the Coast

I've posed this question to a few of you before, but I thought it would be more helpful to ask everyone en masse and sort it out in the comments section. The question I'm asking should be obvious:

Do you think that War of Lords is still viable?

I'm not doubting anyone's conviction, but given that Dai's game collapsed, I've begun to wonder whether this game can actually last. Much of the reason why Dai's campaign fell apart seemed to be slipt between the abundance of effort required and the lack of intrest in sorting through all of the dense political stuff. Let's be honest, much the reason why we play this game it for the kickassery (combat), and there wasn't going to be as much of that in Dai's game, then I guarantee there will be even less in War of Lords. Not to mention even more dense political strategical navigation. Some of us get our jollies from that sort of thing, and some of us don't.

You could very easily argue that once some more of us graduate/hit summer break, it will be easier to find more room for gaming. But even with the time off from Academia, I am not looking very favorably at the prospect of trying to chase down people, especially not in a game with as much work as this one. Not to mention that I'll almost certainly be working multiple jobs if I stay in the city.

So, my friends, we stand at a crossroads.

Discuss.

There is one vital difference between the two. On Chroma, the game required the active participation of all players in order to proceed. If one person's interest waned the entire game ground to a halt, and the delay damaged everyone's engagement in the game. It is also this structure which led to needed to 'chase people down' and badger them into posting.

However, with each person controlling a separate country, especially ones that are geographically distant from each other as ours are, this problem almost does not exist. Each player can proceed for long periods without any input from anyone else except the DM, and one player's inaction will have almost no effect on the other players' ability to proceed.

Because of this, I believe the game is viable, and will prove much more resilient than Chroma.

I think WoL could work, but am unsure if it will. The biggest hurdles I see are the startup cost, both for the DM and the players, and the possibility of bottlenecking on the DM.

WoL could work if we could guarantee a viable population of guaranteed active players. In theory, if I get off my throne of procrastination and ever get around to starting/finishing my nation, there would be 2 players (Dai and I) that don't run the risk of getting bogged down with schoolwork.

Dave's got a good point with the startup cost issue though.

I have never had a problem with not having time to participate in a game, especially play by post, due to schoolwork, and I don't think I will. If I can get my nation's design finished before I leave for China this summer, there should be no problem being able to respond regularly.

Startup cost is the main thing. Actually playing it hasn't been a problem. You remember how much we accomplished from just having 1~2 days of free time between us two.

Also, it helps when people get out of school, which is reason why I'm not going to DM anything for a while =9