How do I get involved at Empire?

General
21

Read through the basics

The list of spells.
The ritual lists
The synod / way overview
The bourse
The Senate
The main nation pages
Combat calls

Note anything that jumps our at you as cool.

Talk to people who do that thing or give it a try.

You can solo but a group is better.
There are probably people in each nation who can help there.

Don’t spend xp until you are sure your doing something fun.

Setting goals is good it helps if you want to x this event or eventually y at some point it gives you focus

22

Crossposting from the Wintermark FB group I’m putting here regarding chasing Imperial Titles that may be useful to folk:

  • Know how the position you’re after – Simply put, know what you want, if you want to be a general, know when they are selected and what it entails, don’t just assume. Ask the Engregores, New player team and existing title holders, watch to see what happens
  • Know who selects the role and get to know them – if it’s senators, get to know the Senators, be useful, particularly in the role you want, if you want to be General, get the numbers and information from the Military Council for the Senators, they’ll love you, get them to remember your name. IF it’s a Senators position, visit those that will vote for you, get them to remember your name. If it’s the Bourse, get backers, smoooze and trade, get a good idea of the money you need for the position you want. Conclave, your order etc. Convince them to vote for you before the vote time comes, the votes and selections are often finales to a show, not the show itself.
  • Know who has the role you want – who has it now? Where are they failing? What are they doing right? Be useful to them, get them to know your name.
  • Don’t give up – it took me nearly 3 years to become a Senator. I wish I’d taken my own advice in places.
  • Friends in need are friends indeed – help those that will vote for you, get them to remember your name
  • The tools of an Imperial Hat - A book with information on it, title holders, constitution, law, religion, Conclave and magic, whichever is relevant to your game. A book for scribbling, a nice IC pen/pencil. And the true symbol of office for an imperial title holder: The MEssenger bag to carry all the bits of paper you’ll no doubt aquire.
  • Make an impact – whether that’s being contrary, clever or stubborn, it doesn’t matter, making an impact gets you remembered. Going from “who’s that” to “oh it’s THEM” is fun.
  • Have a backup plan – if you don’t get the position plan on what your character will do if you don’t what happens? Make sure you keep having fun.
  • There is no such thing as “winning” or “losing”: It’s great getting the position, it can be disheartening not to get it. But often it’s more fun not getting the position than getting it. I had more fun chasing Atte and talking to all the Suaq in camp than arsing about in the Senate. Remember what’s fun.
  • Never compromise your character: This is an odd one, but sometimes compromising on what your character “is” seems sensible to win your role, so compromising where your character nominally wouldn’t. But don’t never do this. Compromising your character kills fun. Know what your character will and won’t bend on. There is no such thing as winning in terms of success but there is winning in terms of characterisation. If your character loses and something interesting and spectacular happens, revel in it and have fun, it’s a game of drama.
  • There are more ways than one. - although I’ve posted my ideas on getting and chasing positions, this are not the only ways, but the ones that I think is most important is that your name and face are remembered, this more than anything else will help your game.
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23

Lots of excellent advice from everyone. :smiley:

Something to think about, if you’re trying to figure out who to approach. People with Imperial positions (“Hats”) might:

  • be rushing from place to place at the time you find them, and although they might appreciate a hand they don’t have time then to stop and bring someone up to speed
  • be busy right now when you found them, but also really hard to find later on when they do have the time to talk to people
  • not have anything that they can easily point you at to do
  • be kinda bad at delegating

(I am guilty of all of these IC.)

So, another good place to look to make connections and get involved is people in meetings you are already in - Conclave, Synod, discussions within your nation - and ask people what they do and what that involves.

You can learn more about different bits of the game that people find fun, and can do it for anyone at all that you feel okay to talk to! And it means you get some idea of what e.g. that person who you always see around the Hub, or that person with cool costume who’s in your nation’s camp, does at events. :slight_smile:

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24

Now that the Winds of Fortune are out and I’ve realised how much there is going on with the Synod, I’m really excited to be playing a religious character. Will I be able to find out when talks on these subjects are being held; is it public knowledge? I’d love to be able to coordinate attending them while still having time for stuff like a skirmish or two.

25

Well you can normally find out when the assembly meetings, both Virtue based and National ones are being held by looking on the Synod notice board in the Hub. The Hub is also a good place to meet priests and they’ll all probably have opinions on the many things going on.

I think that the Symposium that’s happening as well might have some info going up soon too, but if not that’ll be well advertised in the Hub too I think.

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26

The Synod isn’t really a scheduled thing, for the most part. Discussion on those events will be happening pretty much constantly at the Hub, depending on which priests happen to be around at the time; you can raise a motion whenever you want, and it goes on the board for people to vote on for at least three hours. As long as you drop into the Hub every couple of hours, hit some Virtue Assembly meetings, and maybe block out some “hang around in the hub arguing Synod business” time, you’ll be fine.

That’s the general advice; the Symposium this event makes things a little different. There’s a schedule for that which will be public in the field, but it’s been planned over the last couple of events - I’m sure the Land Without Tears thing has a sensible discussion to happen in, and I suspect something that might turn into Asavean Temple discussion might be there, but other WoFs may well not show up.

(There’s a bunch of theology going on at the Symposium, not all of which will be as… wide in scale and impact as the discussions about the Land Without Tears. Hoping to get some other moderately impactful stuff happening, though. :wink: )

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27

While there is a LOT of good advice here, I’m just going to chip in with something else.

You may have produced a character with all the stats, and you may have worked out an interesting backstory (if it has a good story you can tell folk, so much the better). But what do you, or to be precise, your character, WANT?

What is their ambition, what is their drive, their goal? What do they want to do that can be accomplished during the event? For preference, something that doesn’t need much in the way of mechanical skills, but which does need a good amount of talking to people.

Examples:
(my first character) Record the symbol/heraldry/insignia/colours of every group on the field. This took me to absolutely everywhere, people were interested, I met lots of folk, and I sold a couple of copies of the results.

(my second character) Organise as many people as possible to do something in downtime. This meant finding the right people, telling them stirring speeches, and persuading them to join me in a mass sea-raid on the Jotun capital. Great fun.

See if you can become the expert in something. Maybe someone else knows about it, and you can ask everything of them?

Any crafting skills? Make something vaguely useful/interesting and try to sell it. Maps, artwork, props, food!

Anything that requires you to go and bounce off people (metaphorically) in an interesting way. Please bear in mind that while you could claim to be the Imperial Auditor of Facial Hair, and go around measuring beards, impersonating an imperial office could get you in trouble, so make it official. :slight_smile:

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28

If it’s a confidence issue, find a priest of ambition/courage/wisdom (OK, any of them!) - there will be at least 1 hallow/anointing that basically gives you an IC excuse to go be nosy and get involved… I found it was a lot easier to get involved when I had an IC reason that I could ‘blame’ if I wasn’t wanted - and had that little push… :slight_smile:

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29

Ooh. That’s an excellent idea. I will have to look into anointings

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30

This is the Wisdom one Dani has… (Odanava, the priest mentioned in the Matters of Faith WoF… I’d say it worked… And the item’s still valid for another 2 events… Oops…)

Hallowing of the Volhov
You feel driven to find problems to solve and to ignore anyone who tells you to mind your own business.

31

Yes, anointings are excellent as excuses to let you and your characters go do stuff they might otherwise not feel confident enough to do. It’s funny how all we often need to go have fun is someone to give us permission and an anointing by a priest is a marvellous bit of permission :slight_smile:

So yes anointings a++ awesome, go bother priests for them more often :wink:

32

This is going on my mental to do list. Possibly a courage one

33

So to clarify, if I get a piece of jewellery hallowed, it affects me the whole time I’m wearing it?

34

Yes I think so, that’s what this says:

https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Aura#Item_Aura

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35

Excellent steeples fingers

36

Yeah hallowed items affect you the whole time. I think it says somewhere (site is down cannot check) it affects you strongly the first 10 minutes then comes out in particular moments. I think that’s just to say that you don’t have to be role playing to 11 for the whole time

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