Company/Settlement Blog

[Nymerias]

goblinworks.com/blog/

The new blog gives us some insight as to where the developers thoughts on Companies and Settlements are going. I think it is very in line with how we started to build the Keepers of the Circle. So close in fact, that it calls some things into question.

Stephen Cheney recently responded on the Paizo forms to some questions about the blog:

Quote:
I do like the limit on company sizes. 10-50 people is big enough to do something, but small enough to know everybody. Settlement leadership can focus on managing companies, not individuals.
Exactly. One of the major goals is to keep players from getting lost in large numbers. Even though your settlement leaders might not know your name or really care about your concerns, your company leader will and your settlement will be more inclined to pay attention to your company's desires than to a handful of individuals.

I think that mentality is one of the pillars of the multi-circle design we already have.

The other new point to think about is the intoduced mechanic of influence.

Influence has a number of varied uses to complement a company's chosen focus. We'll cover influence mechanics in more detail in a later blog post, but here's a quick overview:

All companies may use influence to forge alliances with other companies or settlements, usually to establish trade arrangements or provide mutual security.
For empire-builders, influence is spent to claim territory in the Crusader Road region. When a company clears the dangerous inhabitants from wilderness hex, they may spend their influence to claim that location for their own.
For mercenaries, bandits, and agitators, influence can be used to declare a feud—a state of PvP hostilities like a war between settlements, but at shorter notice and for a shorter period—against another company or settlement.
For traders and crafters, influence can be spent on boons to help dominate an economy or profession, and on shoring up caravan defenses when transporting goods across the lands.
Finally, for adventuring companies, influence can be spent to claim great rewards from successful escalation cycles, either for the benefit of the company itself or for its sponsoring settlement.

While it isn't something set in stone yet and still in a fluid development process, influence sounds like a currency that our different Circles are going to constantly be wanting to spend differently. (I don't foresee this actually being a problem, because I think we could easily all reach an agreement on most productive uses of influence.)

So I guess the question on my mind is as Companies are currently laid out by the developers, does it makes sense that each of our Circles is actually a Company that all are sponsored by a settlement we create together?

[WxCougar]

I like the idea of each circle being a Company and that the Settlement is what we all create together that then sponsors the individual circles. It would allow us to grow quite a bit too in each circle (I would be quite excited to see more than 50 in each circle). And if an individual circle did get too big for a "company" it would be able to split into subsections like what many of the circles already have.

[Nymerias]

I think we might have to start as one company and pool all our initial influence for settlement establishment. After that we would have a better idea how splitting into companies would be. That system would answer our "how many circles you can be in" question for us though.

[Lorhayden]

I'm thinking first week multiple companies. The only reason I think this is that it may cost us influence when someone leaves a company.

[Nymerias]

That is a very fair point. We would have to figure out which company would be responsible for dedicating their influence gain to establishing the settlement then. On the bright side, they would have all the other circles supporting them in all other aspects of the game so doing that might not be so hard for them.