Development Blog 2 - Economic Structure news

Development Blog 2 - Economic Structure

Hello all. It has been longer than we intended for our next development blog, but we return! Many of us have been busy, some more than others (such as our favourite jew Alexandru getting married!), which is mostly the reasoning for the delay. Today we're going to talk economics and how it is structure within the scenario, between factions and the overall population.

As a follow up note our last Development Blog (1) and the feedback from such, we have decided to simply the ethnicities to which each faction will represent. The issue with Balion I can understand in part the mix up, but we're sticking with them holding a more pre-1066 styled anglo culture and the Swadian English encompassing a more late medieval England. Balion will play little purpose to DNRP3 though and we do not see a pressing reason to make major changes to that aspect of the lore. Thank you for your feedback on this - I will detail each changed faction representation below:

• Kingdom of Swadia - French and English.
• Kingdom of Rhodoks - Irish and Scottish.

Our last development blog was unintentionally left unlocked but we feel we got some constructive responses from it. Therefore we will be leaving this thread open for serious replies and queries and possible suggestions in relation to the topic of this blog; we can't promise to be able to answer all your questions, but we'll attempt where we can. I implore you all to stick to this and anything untoward will be deleted. Now, onto the blog!

You can access the full development blog here on our forums.

Written by alexandru - Ammended by Captain Obvious

Greetings everyone, it has been a while since I've posted anything on this community, and since my return, I have been rather impressed at the amount of old players still hanging around the community, as well as the influx of new players. Today, I would like to talk a little bit about what concept we have regarding the economy for this scenario. There were a lot of lessons to be learned from the first iteration of DNRP, namely that complex systems, while enjoyed by a minority of players, are viewed negatively by the large majority of the community. Hence, I have tried to keep the economy as simple as possible.

Since this scenario is going to be taking place in a city, with mainly two noble houses and an elected mayor, the avenue for conflict and intrigue will be more limited when compared to the traditional dynamics (3 independent factions/2 independent factions etc going at one another). Hence, I would like to introduce you to a new concept, where violence and friction is committed through acts of subterfuge, cunning, conniving. Where trust is lost in an instant, and money means power. Money means status. Money is king.....

The server is made by starting from a simple premise, namely that it will not last for long. Perhaps, if extremely successful, it will last for half a year. Though the odds are slim, as no server managed to achieve that for a long time. Due to this, I want the average player to enjoy their time here. Money will be earned fast, and will be lost just as quickly. I expect an average player, hanging around for 3 hours a day, to have a fully kitted tier 2 armour and a tier 3 weapon after 1 month. Biographies and Character Sheets have been scrapped in favour of Character Applications, which essentially will be a sophisticated Character Sheet, which we hope will allow people to enjoy their roleplay instead of having to do an entry exam to begin their roleplay experience. In turn, requests with gear will be much more lenient to allow a more sumptuous beginning with your character (if desired) - allowing roleplay development to be the key factor.

Players can expect to be able to do the following:

• Players will be able to form organisations, which will require a minimum of 5 active players. They will enjoy special privileges based on their organisation type. For example, if they are a trading based organisation, they have the privilege of exporting weekly. If they are a mercenary organisation, they will be privileged to gain coin from event wars, and treated as a “minor faction” during the event, siding with whomever they wish, and gaining things from pillaging (take the term minor faction with a pinch of salt, we aren't going to be giving out faction rolls or faction slots under any circumstance to this type of organisation). Unique organisations can request unique bonuses, if they are not game breaking. Your imagination is the limit here.
• Players will be able to join a “shadow organisation”, which will specialize in extortion, raiding on map, blackmail, robbery & kidnappings. They will be required to be as inconspicuous as possible, and not reveal their true identity at any moment. This will be a de facto minor faction on the map. They will enjoy multiple privileges compared to other factions, such as the ability to rob the bank, rob the export caravan, and many more. The leader is going to be treated by the staff team as we would treat a noble character, and the player selected to lead this organisation needs to know what he's doing.
• Players will be able to run the bank and export point, with the aid of the staff team. The bank will function similarly like it did in CRP 1, issuing loans, investing in projects, and being basically a capitalists wet dream. They will also be given more leniency when it comes to... certain actions in order to recover their debt. Basically: Don't fuck with the bankers.

Players will be able to earn income from:

• Faction Wages.
• Money Tick.
• IC trades & commerce.
• Stealing.
• Forming organisations and taking advantage of their benefits.
• Joining the criminal organisation on map.
• Being elected as the Mayor and getting a FR. Embezzlement.
• Taking up a profession

Factions will be able to earn income from:

• Faction Rolls.
• Taxes & Permits.
• Rents (however this is much more mid to late game depending how factions handle this, see below for more detail in relation to housing and rent).
• Exports off-map (System will be extremely simple, in short, only 10 goods per week with extremely inflated prices to prevent grind. They need to be exported physically to the edge of the map. The caravan can be ambushed up to the point of reaching the edge of the map, stealing the coins).
• Workshops.
• Craftsmen.
• Pillaging and sabota ging
• events / Covert actions.

Housing/Rent System

As we want to develop a city scenario in a ses to rent out themselves.

• However to curb to some extent, especially on launtyle and theme which encourages progression of assets besides just getting your new shinny sword, we felt the need to changed how houses were handled.
  
  
• Each noble district, as well as the city authorities will have a set area (which physically will have housing models) where there are properties available to sell to the players with a lease. These properities must be sold between a certain minimum and maximum price (which naturally will be lenient but help avoid property being given away for nothing to friends). When sold, a certain % of the money goes in tax to the Duke and must be handed to the mayor, who in turn hands it to the ducal bailiffs.
• At every election, if you own a property, you are expected to renew your lease to the city (which will be a small fee payable to the authorities) - we hope this will allow us to give the freedom for players to own properties whilst keeping the map as free as possible by determining those who no longer play. If the fee isn't paid, the property is returned to the district owners and the house will be considered to be in disrepair and will require refurbishing (aka unmapped). These three faction groups will not start with any rentable housing (their income, especially at the beginning, will be in other areas and this will develop and change depending on the leaderships direction). It will be up to them how they distribute housing to leasing to citizens and buying the lease to properitich, with the lack of housing, the Inn will have six rooms to rent out and the church will have four. As time goes on these will become less desirable but as things begin? They'll be as hot as Alexandru's pouch!

And now, for the truly fucked up part of the economy. Since this is a city scenario, and some friction needs to be made between factions in order for players to be engaged, and war won't be a thing of high occurrence, we are going to have a little fun by utterly ruining each other's days in a passive aggressive way.

• Noble houses have the right to exploit their allotted resources. Permits are issued by the Mayor. Rival Noble House can start a bid for said resource, taking the rights to use said resource. Same with workshops.
• Some areas on the map has ruined workshops/houses. The plots can be bought and rebuild. You can also start a bid on this to take it from one faction through the Mayor.
• You can sabotage your rival's enterprises.
• When electing a Mayor, each house can elect a candidate. Said candidate starts with 5 votes. Each citizen can candidate independently. He starts with 1 vote. Every citizen can vote.
• You can attain citizenship through your economical prowess and status. Up to Patrician (Minor nobility). If you lose your buildings and/or cash, you lose your status & title (or maybe even more!). We will delve deeper in this topic in our next development blog.
• Resources will start off as a mixture of each faction/group requiring the others in order to fuel their workshop, and raw resources overlapping in areas where multiple groups control it (Salt and iron ore in the same mine, controlled by two different entities. Flax and wood in the same woods, controlled by two factions). The choice of cooperating in patrolling the area or stealing each other blind and creating a standstill due to how close everything is to everyone is yours.

In simple terms, everything is permitted, animosity is encouraged, up to the point of upright war in the city: this is discouraged due to the possibility of prematurely ending the scenario. If you want to conquer the other faction, bid on their resources, elect your mayor, shake hands with the bankers or the criminal organisation, bankrupt them to oblivion and make them sell their kidney to pay their men.

But that's it for this week's development blog. Our next blog will be much sooner (in a week!) and will detail in more depth how each faction will work and how they will work with one another and the major organisations. This will include the basis of the mayor elections and how status titles work! Until next time though, thank you all for reading and we hope to see any feedback below.