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So about prodigals

Posted by Apostate on 06/14/18
So prodigals (former shavs) are popular, and it's fun to play the other, characters culturally against type, but I have concerns that some of the nuances of theme might be being lost. When a house swears to the Compact, they really are expected to join the Compact, including embracing their culture. Playing exceptions to that is okay, and I think a lot of people enjoy the potential of facing IC pushback for playing something contrary to the cultural norm, but I think there's been some thematic drift in how okay they are considered to be, and the kind of sideeye that they really should be getting.

There's a couple houses in the works whose designers have talked to me and gotten approval, but after those I'm not going to be approving any more prodigal houses at this time, or any houses in general that aren't culturally part of the Compact. In addition, with social systems I'll probably be gradually reinforcing how the bulk of NPCs just aren't really that cool with prodigals, and the low grade bigotry they continually face. Hopefully people will find that fun, and make their character choices of whether they embrace the Compact or stand by their traditions feel more meaningful.

Finally, I'll probably be tweaking things over time, so characters might feel more nudged to dedicate themselves to particular paths, rather than trying to be all the things to all people. We've always wanted to encourage specialization to avoid people overshadowing other characters, and hybridization is fine, but yeah we want to reward focus and avoid knight-crafter-shaman-priest-prince-etc amalgams that are so spread they lack any meaningful identity at all.