MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Anything else to do with MoM IME
Lubricus
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Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Lubricus »

The original "expanded" thread is getting big, so I thought I'd better keept his one separate. I have thought a bit about the relations the new races proposed by Lucern, Singularity, Nehan and myself would have towards the other races, and of course, each other. Of course, this is pure conjecture, feel free to correct me. I do not want to step on anyone's toes...

Race relation table (unrest levels as represented in the editor):
Beemen Centaurs Dark Dwarves Free Men Gnomes Goblins Orientals Sylves
Barbarians +20 - +20 - +20 +10 +10 +10
Beastmen +20 - +10 +10 +10 - +10 +10
Beemen -2 +10 +20 +20 +10 +20 +20 -
Centaurs +20 - +30 +20 +10 +20 +10 -
Dark Dwarves +20 +20 - +30 +20 - +20 +20
Dark Elves +20 +30 +10 +10 +30 +10 +20 +30
Draconians +20 +20 +10 +20 +20 +10 +20 +30
Dwarves +20 +20 +30 +10 - +30 +10 +30
Free Men +20 +10 +30 - +10 +30 +10 +20
Gnoll +40 +10 +10 +30 +30 +10 +10 +20
Gnomes +10 +10 +20 +10 - +20 +10 +20
Goblins +20 +20 - +30 +20 - +10 +20
Halflings +10 +10 +30 - - +20 +10 +10
High Elves +10 - +40 +20 +10 +30 +10 -
High Men +20 +10 +20 +10 - +20 - +20
Klackon +10 +10 +20 +20 +20 +20 +20 +10
Lizardmen +10 - +30 +10 +10 +20 +20 +10
Nomads +10 - +20 - +10 +20 - +10
Orcs +20 +20 - +10 +30 - +10 +20
Orientals +20 +10 +20 +10 +10 +10 - +20
Sylves - - +20 +20 +20 +20 +20 -
Trolls +20 +30 +10 +30 +20 - +20 +20

I'm sure these numbers need to be adjusted...

Some rationale for my choices: The Beemen and the Sylves ought to be able to live harmoniously together, hence no penalty. And I can't see the Sylves minding the Klackons too much, either. Centaurs and Dark Dwarves will not agree on many issues, I imagine, and the Free Men would dislike any race with slaves, like the Goblins.

What do you think, guys?

Edit: CRAP! I forgot that the extra spaces would disappear when this was posted. I'll make an image of it later.
Lubricus
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Lubricus »

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Lucern
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Lucern »

This is a hearty and contemplative effort Lubricus. I appreciate it. I find it interesting the way you've arrayed some of the races that weren't commented on; you can see that we all interpret some of the base races a bit differently. The Draconians didn't end up with any friends yet in this chart lol. Not saying they deserve it...just saying that it's interesting to me. My next race will be friends with them. I approve of the interpretation of Sylvan/Beeman relations. It just occurred to me that they'd be tolerant of each other: the relationship between bee and plant go back millions of years :D.

Good work here...I'll refer to it myself like I refer to the base races' charts when I'm adjusting stats for my races. I'll update you on any changes as I'm editing races into the game later so that this is up to date.

May the new thread continue the conversations of the old uninterrupted. Or at least...relatively uninterrupted by bots. :)
elliott20
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by elliott20 »

One thing we might want to consider though, the more races we add, the bigger that table will become so perhaps we might want to come up with an easier way to manage things.

one immediate thought that comes to mind is templating. that is, new races will have certain tags that means they share certain characteristics with other races. these tags will in turn effect how other races view them. And of course, we can always insert exceptions to templates to make them more unique.
Lubricus
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Lubricus »

Thanks again for the feedback. I did not deliberately keep all races hostile to the Draconians, I based the numbers here on what I saw as the viewpoint of the new race, rather than that of the old ones, and I could not see any natural friends for the Draconians. On the other hand, I consider the +10 value to be a mild awkwardness rather than outright unfriendliness, as the Draconians can work pretty well with the Dark Dwarves and the Goblins, at least. Plus, the Draconians do very well as they are, so they, unlike the Klackons, for instance, do not need a lot of new friends. That aside, I hope to see some new races that are positive to the Draconians, the Dark Elves, and the Trolls. But then again, races willing to work with these guys won't have many other firends, I wager...

As for relation templates, I say we do not yet need them, even though it is a good idea. When I put in values for the Orientals and Free Men, I looked closely at the relations other humans had. I rather think that a Lizardman or a Klackon would have a hard time differentiating between different kinds of humans, after all. :)
elliott20
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by elliott20 »

yeah, that's sort of what I meant. To make things easier, here's what we can do.

all races have a base attitude towards outsiders. That is, xenophobic races are going to distrust most races that is not their own, regardless of type.
all races will have tags attached to them that describes an aspect of the race. The tags will reflect cultural values and such, and based on that, contrasting with another races values, we can make adjustments to their attitudes. For races with opposing values, it's an easy -10 to their relationship. for races with the same value, it's a +10. And of course, races with similar tags will sometimes get lumped together.

this, however, is another huge project to take on as this means you have to pretty much define a large list of cultural aspects that we can use to describe the races. And that can be difficult.
Lubricus
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Lubricus »

You mean attributes like "magical", "civilised", "mercantile", "militaristic", "religious" and so on? I'd love to work on something like that. I'm ass crap at doing the actual programming, though.
Korenn
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Korenn »

such tags would still have to be defined, which would limit the possible outcomes of the table, or if you user can define them, then all races need to be updated whenever a new tag is introduced.

It might be easier to define a default 'external relations' modifier and then note a list of exceptions.
Lubricus
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Lubricus »

If the tags are made inclusive enough, we wouldn't have to make new ones, only assign the existing ones to new races. I'm thinking a list of traits in pairs of opposites, something like this:

Industrial vs Agrarian
Peaceful vs Militaristic
Magical vs Mundane
Religious vs Pragmatic
Communal vs Individualist
Anarchist vs Bureaucratic
Feudal vs Liberal
Civilised vs Barbaric

Then each race will be assigned a few of them, maybe not out each pair, but enough to make the race unique. The High Men would be Industrial, Mundane, Religious, Liberal and Civilised, perhaps, while the Dark Elves might be Militaristic, Magical, Pragmatic, Individualist, Feudal and Civilised. That would affect the relation between the two like this: +10 unrest for the magical/mundane difference, +10 for the religious/pragmatic difference, +10 for the feudal/liberal difference, and -10 because both are civlised. Thus, a +20 unrest level. Of course, this is just an example.
elliott20
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by elliott20 »

that's pretty close to what I was thinking. the key here is finding keys that is inclusive enough to get most races, with room allowing for exceptions. admittedly, a daunting task
Lubricus
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Lubricus »

Yes, and even more so because the races are so diverse. But it is far from impossible.
elliott20
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by elliott20 »

well, one simple way to do it is to take it from classic value theory approach, which roughly cuts things into three sections: psychology, economics, and sociology. Now, since we're talking about creatures with significantly different biological make up, we can add physiology or biology in there as another field.

funnily enough, this is kind of the approach that Alpha Centauri took with it's social engineering. We'll notice they have 4 fields, politics, economics, values, and future society. again, we can drop the last one and put biology/physiology in it's place.

Alpha Centauri had 4 types for each field. We can have more than that.
Lubricus
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Lubricus »

I think the Alpha Centauri model is far too complicated for this game. Plus, AC let the player change those values - I can't see that working well with MoM. I would like a more static system, like the one I used in my example. It is certainly possible to have more, or fewer, and completely different attributes than the once I (hastily) wrote down, but anyway it will be a lot simpler model to manage that AC's social engineering was. As for biological differences, I don't really think the fact that the Klackons are insects is a bigger issue for the High Men than the fact that the Dark Elves use slaves - rather the opposite. Sure, it should have an effect, but not as much as basic political or religious differences, I feel.
Korenn
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Korenn »

In the fantasy world of MoM, there are no limits to the kind of race someone can imagine. I think it's naive to try and define all possible races and their interactions beforehand (which is what youre trying to do with those keys, in an abstract way).
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Lucern
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Re: MoM IME expanded spinoff - new races

Post by Lucern »

To clarify, is all of this so that we don't have to deal with a complicated chart of race relations, or is there more that you guys had in mind? This sounds like a lot of work for not a lot of payoff if it only involves an easier to read set of race relations. I was thinking about detailing the extremes in the race description in the game so that you'd know what to watch out for in the 20-40+ range and which races your race gets along with swimmingly. The ideas here might be a helpful way of thinking about what you want to set the relations at in any case.
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