Mandalorian Mercenaries -- Ha'rangir's Chosen

[Bardan Kex]

In faction, Indie Factions can become restrictive because it limits where character development can go (i.e. leaning towards being lured to a Main Faction, etc.)

How exactly does it prevent you from being lured into a main faction? People get lured to one job from another job all the time.

and pushes for characters to have rivalries they may not have otherwise, used as pawns for other people's schemes and ambitions.

Both of those things listed seem like a good way to build stories and have some semblance of plot development. Unless you are telling me that Plot Development and Story Telling are wrong.

Being unaffiliated, they also are able to take more jobs, from all factions, even other Indie Factions.

How is a Mercenary Faction unable to take contracts from other Indie Factions or any of the Main Factions, its what they are there for to take those contracts that other factions are unwilling, unable or don't want to do. It's called outsourcing, it happens all the time.

 

[Dmitri]

Too much to say on my phone. I hate long posts on my phone.

I am not going to entertain this witch hunt that I have a desire to see mangos fail. I want them to succeed. Mangos got a bad rep last timeline. I simply want to flesh everything before I approve it.

 

[Ral]

I just want to answer the questions @Dmitri posted earlier, mostly emphasizing what @Silverface said about the way the site seems to encourage independent factions in order to have what would appear to be a greater influence or a greater ability to influence the plot or other factions. As an individual PC you can't own large bases,capital ships, have NPCs or other assets without the direct backing of a faction, whether you're in a main faction or indie, because it's all too easy to be, "Oh well you aren't a faction, so you don't have those kind of resources" or just handwave incidents into being small or insignificant or otherwise ineffectually moving this not!faction's plot forward. Being a combat oriented faction having ships and the resources to impact things on a grander scale is definitely nice. So if we get hired to attack another faction's whatever we aren't limited to a half dozen fighters or some impossible dirty dozen scenario where someone can argue that a small group of PCs wouldn't have been able to do all that much without the resources of a faction behind them.

On top of that, I feel that this faction serves it's own niche for people who want to play with Mandos or as Mandos who either can't serve in the BA/SBZ due to faction restrictions, or those who simply find no interest in those factions and would rather have a smaller, tightly-knit group rather than just some more mooks in a big machine whose story and plot they are only half invested in. I know that for myself and for a few others, they would like to use this faction and tie it into their character's story arcs and plots, using it to help them evolve and maybe even causing the faction to evolve as well. I think the plots the faction could serve would be interesting. I also think that this would still allow for more interesting character development as it gives a conduit for players and factions to interact and meet with one another, which is significantly harder to do without the resources and means of a faction, and would in turn limit the very same character and story building aspects that you mentioned in your post. Sure, I don't think people want the Mandos to be used as pawns for another faction, but what if the Mandos had their own ideas, their own agendas when allowing themselves to be used that way. A very "sure, we'll do their dirty work for now while it suits our needs." sort of thought process. Today they work for a faction, but tomorrow they're selling them out for some possibly obscure reason.

Wouldn't that be interesting? Aren't there just as many, if not more, plots and schemes available to a faction than an eclectic group of PCs?

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Hey everyone. Weiss is a bit busy right now so I'm going to take over handling the rest of this conversation and the approval process. I don't have any concerns like the ones already raised, but I do want to make something clear: the question that Weiss asked is going to be asked of all indie faction write ups from here on out, and potentially even already-approved factions. This one just happened to be the first one to be asked that question.

So it has nothing to do with Weiss being senator of Mandalore, or Weiss having certain preferences for Mandalorian stories, or Mandalorians being treated any differently. You just happened to be first. Weiss could have made that point clearer up front, but can we maybe start with the benefit of the doubt rather than spinning theories? This is how dumb biases start. Let's try to avoid that!

That said, I do want to raise a couple of minor issues with the write up. It's all easily resolvable stuff so we can be well on our way to getting this faction approved - which Weiss was also going to do, but I had some concerns and points I wanted to raise before finalizing that approval.

1. You mention that the faction will make contracts with main factions, among other things, to be part of the war story. I think that's great. However, we're going to have to ensure that that's done in a fairly even way in order to keep this faction approved. Specifically, if this leans more towards favoring the Republic then, because Mandalore is a Republic world, we're going to have to reconsider whether this faction can stay approved. Because at that point we'd have to ask the question, why aren't these characters just in the Border Alliance? And to be clear, "some people don't have available character or faction slots" would NOT be a consideration - that's an issue each individual player would have to resolve and figure out on their own, because allowing that to color our thinking would mean we're compromising the spirit of the character limits. So if the intent is to make contracts with multiple factions and play all sides then that's great, just make sure that the faction's actions match its intent.

2. With only 400 personnel, having three bases spread that far apart seems far-fetched. Having some sort of recruitment center on Mandalore makes sense if it's manned by an extremely small amount of people, but then I think it makes sense to just have the Roon base at that point. Rishi is so far away from Mandalore that I don't see how it would be at all relevant as a recruitment facility anyway. Either the Mandalore base or the Roon base could function as the primary contracting center too. Probably Mandalore makes the most sense there; if people are looking to contract Mandalorian warriors, it stands to reason they're going to go to Mandalore to do that.

And that's basically it - I just need an explicit acknowledgement that you understand Point #1, and then a resolution to Point #2. At that point, unless I notice anything else I may have missed in the first go-around, I think we'll be ready to approve this.

 

[Arcangel]

Hey everyone. Weiss is a bit busy right now so I'm going to take over handling the rest of this conversation and the approval process. I don't have any concerns like the ones already raised, but I do want to make something clear: the question that Weiss asked is going to be asked of all indie faction write ups from here on out, and potentially even already-approved factions. This one just happened to be the first one to be asked that question.

So it has nothing to do with Weiss being senator of Mandalore, or Weiss having certain preferences for Mandalorian stories, or Mandalorians being treated any differently. You just happened to be first. Weiss could have made that point clearer up front, but can we maybe start with the benefit of the doubt rather than spinning theories? This is how dumb biases start. Let's try to avoid that!

That said, I do want to raise a couple of minor issues with the write up. It's all easily resolvable stuff so we can be well on our way to getting this faction approved - which Weiss was also going to do, but I had some concerns and points I wanted to raise before finalizing that approval.

1. You mention that the faction will make contracts with main factions, among other things, to be part of the war story. I think that's great. However, we're going to have to ensure that that's done in a fairly even way in order to keep this faction approved. Specifically, if this leans more towards favoring the Republic then, because Mandalore is a Republic world, we're going to have to reconsider whether this faction can stay approved. Because at that point we'd have to ask the question, why aren't these characters just in the Border Alliance? And to be clear, "some people don't have available character or faction slots" would NOT be a consideration - that's an issue each individual player would have to resolve and figure out on their own, because allowing that to color our thinking would mean we're compromising the spirit of the character limits. So if the intent is to make contracts with multiple factions and play all sides then that's great, just make sure that the faction's actions match its intent.

2. With only 400 personnel, having three bases spread that far apart seems far-fetched. Having some sort of recruitment center on Mandalore makes sense if it's manned by an extremely small amount of people, but then I think it makes sense to just have the Roon base at that point. Rishi is so far away from Mandalore that I don't see how it would be at all relevant as a recruitment facility anyway. Either the Mandalore base or the Roon base could function as the primary contracting center too. Probably Mandalore makes the most sense there; if people are looking to contract Mandalorian warriors, it stands to reason they're going to go to Mandalore to do that.

And that's basically it - I just need an explicit acknowledgement that you understand Point #1, and then a resolution to Point #2. At that point, unless I notice anything else I may have missed in the first go-around, I think we'll be ready to approve this.

To address your first point, i very much intend for the faction to play all sides of the war, true to the spirit of its mercenary nature. The faction will hire out to the Republic if they seek to hire us, just as we would hire out to the Sith or the Jedi should they seek it. With that said i had already planned on implementing some sort of cool down system, where we would basically not work for a faction for some period of time after doing jobs for them, in order to give other factions the opportunity to hire Ha'rangir's Chosen. That way we wouldn't end up with the problem of basically being a sub faction due to long term contracts, as that very much goes against the intent i have for the faction.

On the second point, i have removed the Rishi contracting facility.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Good idea. Can you add that into the intent (with any details you have about how you'd implement it), so that information is available right up front?

 

[Arcangel]

Good idea. Can you add that into the intent (with any details you have about how you'd implement it), so that information is available right up front?

Added to the intent. Hopefully that answers your questions.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Approved!

 

[Phoenix]

So where do I sign Dak up? He fits the "brown haired white guy" mold pretty well

 

[Gandalf]

Is there a Faction sign up sheet up yet?

 

[Arcangel]

Is there a Faction sign up sheet up yet?

There is now!

Sign-ups

 

[Gandalf]

So there is an Indie Faction Tournament with one competitor from each faction. Who's going?

 

[Ral]

We're going to recruit the one person on this site who knows nothing about PvP and send them into the tournament on our behalf, @Sreeya. :P

 

[Taz]

I know I already signed up but thought it better to story thread his recruitment, would anyone to assist in this for Jett ?

 

[Prudence]

I know I already signed up but thought it better to story thread his recruitment, would anyone to assist in this for Jett ?

Were you joining chosen or adi?

 

[Taz]

@Prudence Chosen, I thought ADI was just going to be absorbed into this till I saw Arc's workshop.

 

[Prudence]

@Prudence Chosen, I thought ADI was just going to be absorbed into this till I saw Arc's workshop.

I can do a recruitment with ya if ya want.

 

[Horizon]

Back in my day, there was only Death Watch.

Fuck the loyalist.

#throwbackcomment

 

[Dmitri]

Back in my day, there was only Death Watch.

**** the loyalist.

#throwbackcomment

All you need is 4 more people to make a Death Watch faction.

 

[Horizon]

All you need is 4 more people to make a Death Watch faction.

Or one. Like me.

Mandalorians aren't ripe for that kind of divide. You know that.

Missed you, bud.