One of the most important parts of our gameplay in Reclamation will be our unique Guild system. At the highest level, there are eight Great Houses which can be occupied by an aspirant-guild. These houses are permanent structures within the game world and they offer a variety of advantages for the aspirant-guild that takes one and becomes a house-guild. This includes the ability to store items, give out missions for experience rewards, a rank system with specialized crests and arts, access to powerful house arts learnable only by members, specialized access to resources and much more.
The Houses are an integral part of the game world and story. With all of the benefits that come with them, none are so important as the power they have by their organization alone. This makes a House something most people will aspire to. Each House has a set of general beliefs, decided on by the founding aspirant-guild. These belief sets are conflicting in nature, and add to the role-played conflict between guilds and houses.
Politics among the eight houses keep conflict in Reclamation stirring. Add in the possibility of rogue dreamers, alienated ex-members, or just a group of people aspiring to have a House all their own and forming an aspirant-guild, and that's enough to make things very interesting. Houses and aspirant-guilds may declare war, for a cost, and during declared wars have the ability to remove the current house-guild and take the house for themselves. This is not an easy task, but we've found from experience that this option must be included.
Politics, intrigue, conflict are the lifeblood of the Reclamation Guild system.
There are two different types of guilds, aspirant and house. An aspirant-guild is a group of at least ten dreamers who hold the same beliefs, and wish to take over one of the Great Houses. A house-guild is an aspirant-guild that has successfully taken over and assumed the mantle of a Great House.
"So, Calenture no longer wishes to deal with the current rulers of the Light? Well … you'll have to deal with a Aspirant, and we offer the best option. Why, you ask? See these warriors here? All are ex-members of the Light." - Kraelich
An aspirant-guild must have at least ten members. A group wishing to form an aspirant-guild decides on the set of beliefs they will follow, the House that they wish to open, and their initial ranks. A guild must have at least 2 rulers, 2 guardians and 6 initiates to begin with.
The leader of the soon-to-be aspirant-guild evokes the art of Found Guild at a special location within the City. The art requires that all ten founding members to be present. During the evoke, the leader will provide the name of her aspirant-guild, its charter, the names and ranks of the members, and the set of beliefs the aspirant-guild will follow. The leader will automatically receive the highest rank of ruler. Before the evoke is complete each member of the group must give assent to the details of the aspirant-guild, if not, the evoke is disrupted. The ranks of the members are locked in from highest to lowest in the order of assent: First two are rulers, second two are guardians, and last six are initiates. Once the aspirant-guild charter has been agreed to by all members, the evoke is complete, but the group is not yet a aspirant-guild.
The GM team must sign-off on the potential aspirant-guild's charter. They will be looking for in-character consistency, and of course any out of character violations. The qualifications for an appropriate house charter will be available to everyone. This process will last, usually, no longer than 24 hours. If the house charter meets the qualifications, the aspirant-guild will become official, and all its members will be elevated to aspirant-guild status with all of the appropriate arts/powers based on rank.
The house charter is one of the most important documents a potential aspirant-guild can create and agree to. This document will define the guild for its life, and will be the basis for both role-play support and role-play adjudication by the GM team regarding said guild. Imagine, a role-playing environment focused on the unique player-made guilds! Well, that is precisely what we are talking about! There will be many good house charter examples in and out of game, so that an aspirant-guild won't go into the process completely blind. The house charter will allow every group to define and facilitate its unique characteristics.
The house charter has a number of parts. Each guild has a major dream belief: either Illuminate or Freesoul and a minor belief associated with nightmares. The two major beliefs are the foundation of every part of the Dream. Illuminates believe that the Dream is a higher plane of being to which their souls come. Thus, they believe that events in the Dream may impact their souls and their waking lives on Cloudsbreak. Freesouls, on the other hand, believe that the Dream is a mental plane only, a shared dream in which their minds and imaginations take part. Freesouls do not believe that the Dream can have more than minor, mental effects on a Dreamer's waking life.
Each guild also has a unique approach for dealing with nightmares and nightmare essences. This approach is defined by their minor belief. Each Guild believes that their belief is the best and only belief for handling these dangerous and powerful essences. The methods are: Banishment, Imprisonment, Draining, Cleansing, Captivation, Destruction, and, Cohabitation. Each method has a corresponding Art, except for Cohabitation whose believers use the Art of Sacrifice to alter damaging weapons and produce tokens with which to power their House Prime.
The next step is the house-guild. The mighty eight of legend that sit at the ends of the planes; the great fortresses that protected dreamers from many dangers. For long years the Houses have been divided by their beliefs about the dream and about nightmares and little has changed there.
The Houses are large fortress-like buildings with a number of rooms, many of which are locked to anyone not a member. They are run by player-character rulers and guardians, and populated by initiates. They are ‘powered’ by their prime artifact, a monolithic structure located in the Celebration Hall. Most primes are powered by collecting essences from collapsed nightmares, though there are alternatives for those who do not follow the path of violence. The essence strength collected in the primes allows the House to perform administrative functions, use House arts, and pay the maintenance fee. Members will be able to pick up the prime’s key and use it to access the artifact indirectly. With power tokens, this will also give members access to the personal storage space within the prime, where they can keep their personal belongings securely.
Each House has its own Sanctuary, a place where weapons and offensive arts cannot be used. The Armory and Vault provide the House with a place to store a weapons cache or other important items to the House without having to worry about invaders. This is a luxury not afforded to Houseless wanderers
The Mission Boards will provide the Great Houses with another added benefit, by allowing members to communicate through them, give missions, grant rewards, and post notices. Being in game they are a quick and easy reference for any member to see what’s been going on while they weren’t playing, or get missions to aid the House’s cause.
With the Great Eight being rediscovered in this new era of the dream, it is only a matter of time before they are re-populated and their secrets unlocked once again. The stage is set and what happens will be in the hands of all dreamers. What dreams may come?
War has been a part of human existence forever; where there are conflicting ideals, there is war. It is inevitable then that war exists in the City of Dreams. There will be times when two Houses cannot settle their differences in any other way; times when a group of Freespirit dreamers will organize to take over a House, and Reclamation provides for just this type of situation.
House to House War
"The Calenturi have repeatedly ignored our simple requests to stop hunting on our territory. If they will not keep their Initiates in check, then we have no choice but to put an end to this ourselves. Organize the warriors, we march to war!" - Greyhawk, Ruler of the Light
When Houses have disputes they can be and often are settled at the highest levels by diplomatic means. There are places in the City specifically for this purpose, where ruling bodies can meet and discuss important issues between Houses. However, human nature sometimes prevents two parties from coming to an agreement, and sometimes power and corruption make it impossible to use these methods. A ruler may find it necessary to call his House to war, and she may do this with the ruler art Declare War. At this time a War Timer will be activated, and every member of the House declaring war will lose a percentage of experience every day for seven days, unless the war is ended before seven days are up.
Once war is declared, it is possible to strike at the heart of an enemy house, their Prime Artifact, however, it is also now possible for the other House to strike at the declaring House's Artifact. A group of warriors must fight their way through the enemy's defenses, including other dreamers and dreamstructs. If they make it to the Prime, they will be able to evoke Drain Prime. After a successful mission like this, the defending House may want to end the war quickly and give in to the attacker's demands. Both sides would have to agree to a treaty to do this.
There are costly ways to bring an enemy House to its knees. By declaring war every seven days continuously to prolong a war, your House will continue to suffer the experience penalties, yet will be able to keep up the assault on the enemy’s prime. If a house-guild cannot pay its maintenance fee for five straight weeks, it will be turned to an aspirant-guild if there are enough members to do so, if not they will simply be removed from the house and disbanded. Of course, five straight weeks of losing experience every day may have your House members a little on edge and may not be the wisest choice, as there is another way.
The other, and easier way for one House to remove another House's members is to partner with an aspirant-guild. These partnerships can be mutually beneficial, giving the Aspirant a full House's support, and the House a much easier, less time and energy consuming method of combating an enemy House they wish destroyed.
Aspirant-Guild to House War
"I would not worry much about the Light, Ferdan, as per my task I have come up with a plan to expand our reach. I've found enough dreamers to form a Aspirant-Guild calling ourselves the Sword of Calenture, and we will strike at the Gathering... however,we'll need some supplies." - Terwin
Aspirant-Guild war is only slightly different from House wars. One major difference is that the aspirant-guild doesn't have access to the Mission Boards which help in recovering lost experience, nor do they have secure armories with which to arm themselves. This makes it a lot more difficult for an aspirant-guild aspiring to be a house-guild.
They can declare war much the same as a House can, and when they do they are subject to the same War experience penalty for 7 days. During this time the enemy House's Prime is vulnerable to their attacks. Assuming the aspirant-guild has made it this far, 10 of their membership must evoke Taint Prime in the Prime Artifact's room, and then defend it for 12 hours while the Prime is tainted. The House will have this amount of time to go in and evoke Cleanse Prime to take it back. Only a single House member needs to do this.
Important note, as with all actions in Reclamation, all of the effects of a character's actions are based on the player's role-play idea and the in-character actions that reflect it. The Faction system offers an additional layer to the consequences of in-character actions associated with guilds and guild warfare.
One of the new systems we are implementing with Reclamation is a faction system. It is a system that allows for every member of a guild to effect changes with their actions. Faction can be:
Declared War
Violent
Hostile
Neutral
Friendly
Allied
Every newly founded guild starts with a Neutral faction to everyone. By their actions they will determine their stances with every other guild. Whenever a member uses a Sanctuary art (an art that can be evoked in a Sanctuary where no offensive arts can be used) on a member of another guild, they will have a positive effect on their faction with them. On the other hand, every time a member uses an offensive art on a dreamer of another guild, they will decrease it. Doing actual damage will have a stronger effect and actually collapsing another will decrease it even more.
Faction will be able to have effects on a number of other parts of the game. For example if a student and teacher's faction is at violent, the teacher cannot Train the student. A Binding (an art that locks portals) can be set to certain faction and above. And AI monsters and other NPC's reactions toward you may be different according to your faction.
Faction will not determine whether PvP combat interactions can take place, rather character interactions (including PvP combat) will determine what happens to the faction. It will take multiple individual actions to make a noticeable move in faction. For example, Initiate Drea accidentally firing a weapon at an member of another guild will not decrease the faction from Neutral to Hostile, however a skirmish involving more than 2 dreamers may have this affect. With damage being taken and given from both sides multiple times, with multiple participants, it is easy to see how a lot of faction change will take place.
Now, when that opposing guild enters your territory, they may have problems with your Heartstone Guardians. The leadership will have to decide if they want to leave that as a liability or make amends and try to get the faction back up to Neutral again.
This is a system that adds an additional layer to every action, positive and negative, nudging players along to roleplay with the world that they have helped shape.
Note that granting Personality Points will not have any effect on faction as it is an Out of Character mechanic meant for players to reward players, and faction is determined between characters and guilds.
There are plans for the lands in the world of Reclamation to be able to be claimed by Houses, to allow them to define their borders and strengthen their hold. The world is broken up into planes, and each of them has at its center, a Heartstone. The Heartstone will be some object, shrine, or monument that allows guilds to have a factional stance with it. Dreamers can interpret this as they will, whether they believe some deity or other force gives the Heartstone this power.
A House-Guild will need to raise its faction with the Heartstone to an 'allied' level. They can do this the same as they would with another guild, by evoking Sanctuary arts on it. A Heartstone can only have positive faction with one guild at a time. In order for another guild to take control of this Heartstone they would need to first attack it until its faction with its original guild went to neutral, then evoke Sanctuary arts to raise their own faction with it. With Heartstone guardians watching out for it, this may not be easy. But controlling territory just might be worth it.
The benefits to increasing a House's holdings are as follows:
Heartstone Guardians - their strength and number increases with the size of House's sphere of influence,
Enhanced arts - evocation times on your own lands will be decreased,
The ability to display your House's emblem prominently in your lands,
Controlling valuable resources that can be 'tuned' to be available only to your House or factions of friendly or higher
Enhanced Soul Shield (An art that gives an extra shield to non-combatants).
With these advantages Guilds will certainly need to expand their reach and defend their lands to stay ahead of the competition. These systems will go hand in hand to allow a new level of consequence and ownership over individual actions, as well as new strategies for inter-guild combat, war, and diplomacy.