Allegiances

[damiller]

I love these, I just can't seem to make them work very well for me. They end up either being to a person or a god, and somehow I see how they could be much more than that. Alas, I can't seem to figure out how.

Any thoughts?

d

 

[Damien]

Perhaps you're not enforcing the allegiance harshly enough?

Make sure that it comes up in the game. Also recall the "trickle-effect." If a person has an allegiance to a God - then it's highly probable they have to listen to the people tha outrank them in a church setting.

I'll post more later, but apparently I have to go right now.

 

[argo]

The allegiance system is (by design) very open ended, I susupect your players are lost in too many options. Remember that an allegiance can be almost anything. Try talking with them and figguring out what is important in their character's lives (maybe someone wants to be wealthy, or is a patriot of their kingdom, maybe another person hates Nordenhimer's with a passion or is in love with an NPC) then try and make those character goals into "allegiances".

Hope that helps.

 

[damiller]

Oh its me, not my players haveing difficulty with the allegence system.

I am very happy that it is open ended, I just don't have a handle on it. Like I said, I end up creating NPCs that have the same kinds of allegiences. Either to people or gods, and I can "see" that there are many more possiblities, but don't quite have a handle on them.

thanks for all the input so far!
d

 

[argo]

Alleigances for NPC's hmmm? Try this, don't sweat it if you can't think of an inventive alleigance when you are first making the NPC. Then durring play if it occurs to you that the NPC displays an affinity for something (or if it simply seems that the game would be more interesting/painfull for the players if the NPC were to have an alleigance) then retcon in that alleigance for the NPC.

Otherwise forget it entierly. Most NPC's probably don't have enough stage time for alleigances to make any significant impact.

Later.

 

[toothill man]

the DM before me which was a very very long time ago spent so much TLC on npcs that any deaths even of major bad guys were greeted with major sulks and silly attacks on the pcs.

our job is to entertain remember one adventure killed us all because we didnt think to check a bottle in a tavern :roll: detail is great but too much detail is sometimes a bad thing :shock:

 

[Bregales]

the DM before me which was a very very long time ago spent so much TLC on npcs that any deaths even of major bad guys were greeted with major sulks and silly attacks on the pcs.

our job is to entertain remember one adventure killed us all because we didnt think to check a bottle in a tavern :roll: detail is great but too much detail is sometimes a bad thing :shock:

Good points. I haven't paid attention to allegiances as such, I've just role-played NPCs as I felt they'd react to each other and NPCs, so I'll have to look into this in the book. (Funny how much you forget between reading rules and gaming, and I've read the AE twice cover to cover ).

I too played with a GM who acted the way your erstwhile GM did, he made books he liked into campaigns, then dropped them when we didn't act the way the characters in the story he read had acted. And most of the time we didn't realize what he was expecting us to copy until after he quit it or killed us all off.

You wrote it best: our job is to entertain. Never let rules or rule options get in the way of having fun (when that happens in our group, the guys call it 'Pissing GM Contest' which seems apt enough). Hope you figure out allegiances, I'll try to look up how they're supposed to work later.