Legends: Relam variants

From: griffith@dweeb.fx.com (Jim Griffith)

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 02:16:08 +0000

As you may have read, I posted an article where I blast someone for suggesting
that players should run influencers in realm variant games.  I also loudly
extolled the virtues of buying statuses.  It seriously tweaked me that my
experience could be so different with the other poster's.

It turns out that in the early Realm variant games, players could buy "major
Titles", which bestowed serious amounts of prestige.  I would guess that these
are equivalent to the Elven "Lord of the Woods", which gives some 30 or 40
prestige.  What happened is that these titles and other considerations made
the game strongly favor influencing as a route to power, and factions would
launch "influence wars" on other factions, achieving victory by influencing
major factional characters away.  This caused a lot of problems, and MG
quickly changed things, removing "major Titles" as a bonus point purchase
option.  Starting with Realm 7 (I think), players can only buy maybe 10 points
worth of prestige on startup, and that would require the purchasing of marks.
As such, the variant games no longer favor influence, and, in fact, influence
is largely worthless in the current variant games, due to the difficulty in
getting prestige combined with the natural speed of the game.

So getting back to the original poster's question, if your variant game
offers "major Titles" (this is Australia, right?), then by all means, go the
influence route.  If not, then don't bother, and go for a status or something
else instead.

And there is a caveat to the status claim.  If you work closely with a
factional senior, you can *probably* get a powerful status given to you,
through a commune (although I haven't seen the new commune rules) or some
other factional power.  But if you're working alone, and if you don't want
to go the vampyre route, then a status is a good thing, especially if you
want to bash ruins or lairs or train troops.  And if you plan to be a major
factional troop trainer, then don't bother, because you'll want to be a Lord
of the Dead (which afflicts vamp lord troops), and you'll need help from
your senior to get there.

Jim

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Jim Griffith  /--OO--\     | Two great powers are on our side: the power of
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