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Yashan. the Labradoodle of Velstra :).
I'll miss having him about.

When you say "in the ponds?" do you mean the whole ponds or just the Hideout?

I would agree that with Ticker under the control of the Peerage, it would be good to have a bolthole. It's odd there's no Bad Neighbourhood in Ticker which is free of Blackjacks, has its own thugs, and serves as a place for dissenters to hide out. It made the whole Patriots thing a bit wierd as they shit talked the houses then went back to openly walking around occupied territory in front of the guards. 

Similarly, it's a bit wierd that the social hub of the Ponds is right next to the road, rather than some distance from the regular groups of armed thugs passing through.

The threat isn't Filthy Willy the 6 HP Beggar. It's that any of those beggars might actually be a covert druid or Elder Werewolf and you would never know from looking at them.

It's only -1 AC

[Hound]

Hound: I agree completely that FR is dull as ditchwater. One thing that drew me back to EfU was the DMs literally  setting it the last bits of FR on fire and writing a new setting. Which gave a chance for you all to decide what a fantasy race could be, and you've nailed it so far. The foundations of something great are there for making elves, dwarves and gnomes into strong storylines. Halflings, nothing yet. But there's a pirate in the lore, and I mentioned one way that could be built out.

I was incredibly impressed by the dwarven lore because it was such a fresh take on religion compared to FR's halfassed polytheism. A Dwarf Cleric or Paladin means something very different to a human, elf, gnome one. Their "gods" are those they make for themselves. It's not about "aye lad dig deep" it's a culture about being a paragon of whatever you are. The greatest hero or the most terrifying villain. A tale to remember. And that could be amazing, for example playing up the conflict between proud, ambitious Ticker Dwarves and the lactose-filled apathy of Baron Uld and his lazy thugs. The Ancestor cults mean an on-brief dwarf is innately a force of change in a setting marked by stagnation and decay.

Seeing a fraction of the hubristic and tragic backstory for CoR elves made me consider playing one of those, which I have never wanted to do before. But I had to crack through a lot of Running to understand that this thing was possible.

The fact there's no gnomes in the city from more than a few generations back means their history and their connection to the Recondite is a plot in itself. Similarly, the Toyfolly feel like they are to gnomes in the City what the Mafia were to Italian-Americans in its heyday.  There's depth just waiting there.

I'm not surprised that most memorable PCs have been human when most PCs are human. That's just how over-representation works. But with a fresh setting, DMs have a chance to make races other than human interesting. Because let's face it, playing a human is not innately interesting. What's interesting is playing a PC in this particular culture or group that humans get to be in. And humans tend to get more vairety in that. The Peerage has some variety, sure, but they all have that common set of standards.

Tl;Dr: The Big Idea
I'm not saying "Let's have Elf Town and Dwarf Hold and Halfling Boat". That just means the cliches never go away. I'm saying that factions or areas with a majority non human population give room for a powerful set of alternative ideals. For example, the Delvers Guild are a PC faction but you can tell they're led by a dwarf.  The oaths and shares, reminiscent of Thorin's contract. The NO HALF ORCS,  the ambition to push a frontier in search of riches, the grudges. Dwarf culture is laid on thick from the top.  Imagine that, but with NPC support. You take the tropes that people associate elves or halflings or whatever with. And you make a faction where anyone who joins is there to embody that agenda and those ideals, regardless of species.

[Goblinoid domain (Primary)]

I was wondering how to help goblins being proper devious little bastards. One thing EfU does well is make NPC goblins scary, as if you underestimate them they will mess you up.

Goblinoid domain (Primary)
L1: Expeditious Retreat.
L2: Inflict Serious Wounds.
L3: Infestation of Maggots.

That's a selection of spells designed for being annoying and running away at low level. Especially with the buff to CSW that means it applies a 30% healing debuff.
Infestation is both a nasty attack spell, and on theme for goblins.

1/day Racial Power token like for Drow/Orc/Halfling etc. +1 Dex, +2 AB vs Humans.

Started playing a kobold alt due to being alone in a deep ring. I can earn money from rat hunting in the lair but I don't have anywhere to spend it. It would be useful if there was a basic merchant selling the same sort of things you can get in the Ponds if you're playing a goblin. As your bolthole is quite a long way from anywhere useful, and you can't even buy ammo. I understand Kobolds are supposed to be hard but "dead because I ran out of food/ammo despite having plenty of gold" isn't particularly interesting.

I assumeI can trade with Ponds merchants, but I don't know what's OK to trade with in 99. Other than the Rat Raft.

[Bearic]

Bearic:  Yeah you've nailed it. I think the Peerage is oversubscribed because with 5 houses, the Cathedral, the Groat and the option to app for Archive Scribe, there's a lot of space in factions with interesting agendas. There's no incentive to maybe try Ponds or Ticker because the Peerage is full up, and Peerage is Human Only. I noticed a lot of players bailing on Ticker in the middle of the Copper Torc war. Possibly due to the apparent futility of trying to stop the Torcs, and the lack  of much authority or drive from serving a guildmaster. Whereas Houses got their Prestige economy, duels, and authority. Playing a human means you get less prejudice from the Peerage and lots more means for promotion and character development.

"These things come in waves" is the exact problem I've spotted.  People pile on to where the action is because there's limited DM attention. When one place has all the plot and plenty of groups bouncing off each other, it gets players. Which means when a wave comes, there's a need to give a shot in the arm to whatever the wave missed. In Ticker, you have to make your own entertainment, but since it's subordinate to the Peerage now, there's less room at the top to grab power or get influence.  So given that the Peerage is on the rise right now, low-grade opportunities to make life hard for it would be welcome. I hear a lot of fighting talk over sendings and big-deal DM-supervised attacks. But for example, despite there being a lot more druid plants aound recently than there have been in a while, it doesn't seem to be negatively impacting the Peerage.

The Weavers being burned down when most or all of  its PCs were offline was something of a disappointment. It didn't feel like something that could have happened if a Retainer or Accountant had done a similar antagonistic act to what Ailis Weaver did. But then the Weavers never had control over anything important. The Accountants had a fortified bank, the Retainers had estates. The Weavers had a tailor shop. it was never clear to me what you would want to go to them for, or what power they had. Whereas the Accountants would loan you money, and everyone can use money!



Flagon:  With a stronger Ticker, the threat of "not being able to trade in Ticker "was at least real, as there was no Burgage stall. It meant Ticker did have some control over trade. The Burgage is a great area but I think it kind of killed Ticker. The Burgage brought in cheap rentable rooms with storage that undercut the Guildhalls massively. It brought in stalls that weren't under Merchant Guild control. It even made fishing into apparently a decent profit. It took away Ticker's selling points, as the Peerage became pretty much self-sufficient. 



Gordan:  That is a valid IC opinion to have in the Peerage, but the more you step into the Rings, the more you see it's just one corner of one Ring using a prejudice to reinforce their power. TBH you can work that out just from looking in Ring 99. I can't say more without spoilers, but as ever in EfU, a lot of the beginner brief shouldn't be taken at face value OC. Also, mechanically, you can easily make strong builds off Gnomes, Dwarves and Halflings in ways you can't match playing a human. Bear in mind that "simply outliving all your enemies and having a personal memory of historical events" is the sort of thing that could make an Elf faction unmatched politicians and spies if they managed to exploit it.

It's irrelevant anyway, because you can design a world with whatever power structure you want, then justify it. The point, as ever, is "How to make a world where you have a lot of interesting concepts to play".  And what fantasy races do is let you play characters with a perspective that you can't see yourself having, or with a personality aspect that would be considered wildly eccentric for a human but completely normal for say, a halfling. So your PC has to recalibrate when dealing with dwarves/elves/humans.

The biggest problem is that some Turn Undead results can wipe your party. Imagine triggering Cleansing Flame from the Fire perk just after your team ate a Negative Energy Burst and now everyone is on fire. Or mis-aiming the Evil domain power and half the enemies got a big buff too. It's not just the chance of burning a round to do nothing, it's that it could make your situation worse! Compared to that, the death domain effect which lowers saves vs spells you might not be using isn't that bad.

Either all the Turn results need to be good to have mid-combat, or you need a /c command to let you select which one you use. There's little point in having situationally useful powers that you have little chance of triggering in the situation where you want them. I think this would be a preferred option as if you had to pick one at chargen, people would never pick the situational ones. The command could be on a 10 minute cooldown to stop people doing stuff like buffing with all 3 in succession.

[Flagon:]

Flagon: I think part of that is because Ticker's driving force has always been GROAT, which isn't particularly exciting. it's in unrestricted supply (unlike Prestige, where the Dispensary and Gladiators only pay out to the winner), and breaking social mores won't take it away.  Whereas the Peerage allows for gladiator fights, Dispensary and duels as fairly major means to command Prestige. And you can lose Prestige by breaking the rules. And on a server where 'Violent PVP Drama' and 'DM Attention' are valuable meta-currency, having your IC currency link into that is a big deal.

Plus, Ticker's rebellion didn't make much sense. If it threw off the Peerage by force of arms, within living memory, then what happened to all the armed forces? It's claimed in the wiki pager for Peerage Attitudes "there was never any battle" in which case it needed some sort of economic leverage that PCs could be actively involved in maintaining. For example, control over goods that the Peerage would starve or riot without.
Ticker never had anything the Peerage depended on, so it never had a key resource for PCs to protect or fight over.

Having a hub where you can't just openly beat up or oppress your rivals with DUELLO is very much advantageous as you gain a place where PvP crushers can be a fish out of water. The more lawless oldschool Ticker didn't have much distinction from the Peerage in that way. They were just a more honest sort of thuggery, without the Fantasy Racism.

Secutor: The point I'm trying to make here is that as soon as you get deeper into the Rings (even to the Bulwark), its clear that 99 becomes increasingly isolated and irrelevant. To pick a great quote from Firefly: "Sad little king of your sad little hill". There's what I see as a missed opportunity so far to populate more rings with majority non-humans and really flip the power balance for Peerage PCs. Give them an increasing sense of alienation the more they push away from their decadent, neat Ward. A worrying knowledge that the King is not playing by the same rules that the Peerage claims.

Creme bulette: I don't think it's forcing anything on players if you write a basic species brief for elves/gnomes/halflings etc. Giving a few rules actually promotes creativity because you have a jumping-off point for your ideas. As opposed to "You can do anything! Be Creative!" which means that nobody has a common touchstone for what a given culture means.

Honestly, I think that if you have Fantasy Racism in a setting, the best way to do it is to have humans as the oppressed class. That way, the default PC is proactively pushing up against a system just by by succeeding. And there's an incentive to choose a non-default PC race for social power. The King is one of the best mysterious fantasy antagonists I've seen in a game, but is largely not framed as The Enemy and given widely available means to undermine him.

But that's what we've got, and that's fine. So I think that giving more space for non-human concepts to join forces as powerful as the Peerage is important. They don't have to be equal in terms of ground held, they just need to have some power base that means the Peerage can't roll over them with knights. Which is why I used nautical halflings as an example.

VP: I think you don't understand it because you enjoy rolling up your own concepts, and could basically have fun in a paper bag. I enjoy playing to a brief that seems interesting, and encouraging others to get in on that brief.

There is a lot of space for non-human concepts, but there's not a lot of support or foundations. As you've noticed, there's more immediate support for monster races (Rat Raft, outcast camp, kobold hideout, goblin hideout) than there are for say, elves. To the point you were in an elf group that built their own lore up. And then eventually fell over after some heavy PVP losses, not leaving anything substantial for the next Elf group to build on.

For example, one of next PCs was probably going to be a dwarf. Until I realised it would be just so much easier to get people involved with his goal if I made him a human, as I could recruit from anywhere. Whereas a Dwarf would be much more limited and not gain much of interest unless there was already a strong dwarf PC faction at the time.

The Dwarves really don't "have an entire Ring to themselves". They have a shrine and a tollbooth, and fewer NPCs than House Glitt. Not even a spawn point or a merchant there, let alone plot or their own quest.  And again, it's the Racial Faction Problem. You get a small, often  OC organised group that goes on for a bit then falls to bits.  I think you're right to notice it though, because if there were more groups in the 98-95 area that were independent of the Peerage and could provide things they relied on, we'd have more interesting conflict and plot. Not least as it would showcase how 99 is a small corner of a big ruined city.

Yes, you can play outside the Peerage, but look at the list of Associations. Look at the focus of DM interaction on the Peerage, and the way that belonging there has few downsides. It doesn't exclude you from a bunch of stuff. You can play in Ticker, but it's still subordinate to Peerage Prestige-wanging. I actually forgot completely about the Knaves as they just dropped into my "outlaw" category, with the exception they get voice-changer masks.

As for your list.

• Recondites are a Recondite-only faction.
• Creating your own faith is just an admission there's nothing built into the setting that serves the purpose. It only really lasts as long as the group, even if it does become a canonical Small God.
• Your last three options are all Monstrous/Outlaw concepts

Why is it good, in your opinion, that the majority of PCs are human? We've got a high-fantasy setting with low-fantasy narratives. I feel that strong niches for non-human characters are a good anchoring points to encourage players not to default to Grim Beige Game Of Thrones Wannabe and to play a wider set of personalities. They're a way to put an easy spin and differing set of ideals on a character.

EDIT: So as not to spam replies, in response to the below:
The Toyfolly don't count as a Gnome faction to me as they're clearly the Gnome Mafia, and a solid antagonist for Gnome PCs. You can see how terrified all their merchants are. They'd be the perfect enemy for a Gnome PC faction.

I've noticed that since Ticker got invaded, the number of non-human PCs has took a nosedive.  Associations have been whittled down to 5 Human-Only (with some exceptions for Velstra) Houses, the Recondite (Recondite only, outlaws) and the druids (outlaws).  And the Prospectors, but they don't appear to have a goal beyond "hoard planar junk to fix up our hall". There's not a clear rival to the Peerage any more. Given that, it's just so much easier to get in on DM plot or political conflict as a human because you can openly work with any of the Peerage factions. Whereas there's a much smaller number of PCs likely to think that working with the Recondite or Druids is a good idea.

Thing is, there's lore to build on here. A big draw of playing a non-human character in an RPG is in playing with an alien perspective on the world. Without that, halflings just work out as short humans and elves as skinny humans with pointy ears:

• The Recondite are fresh and amazing and well done to Arc for a brief that feels solid and interesting to interact with whenever I cross paths with a Recondite PC.
• The Dwarf lore is now accessible without a keystone, which is good. But there's not much there beyond the paladin oath and the names. Their religion brief is, however excellent as it contains mysticism, encouragement to action, and reasons for followers to disagree. "All Ancestors are worthy but not all Ancestors are Good" indeed!
• Elf lore is there but all I've seen is pretty damn deep, so you don't start out with much to build your characterisation with. It's excellent, but rather inaccessible.
• Halfling lore is... IDK pirates?
• There's definitely something going on with Gnomes between the Toyfolly and the mysterious lack of any old-age gnomes in the city.
• Half orcs can wonder about Gnasharim, although with the Crossroads gone it doesn't seem to show up as much.

All of this has massive potential,  but I think it needs a bit more of a push. I don't think that more X Race Only factions are the way to go, as it makes them fragile. It's hard to recruit IC, and it limits you to one PC minority. "Human only" only works because human is very flexible on builds and the default pick. I do think that factions with a moderate prejudice towards a couple of character races could work. So it's not just a cae of "sudden bursts of dwarf or elf groups then nothing when they TPK"

As an example, halflings.

• Given that Vunco was as an infamous pirate, what about pushing halflings with a nautical culture?
  
• Replacing most of the Canal Mariner NPCs with halflings and working that in more would give an area that's dominated by a strong nonhuman group that the Peerage can't just stomp on as they need the trade.
• You get an incentive to ring run and you could promote a set of values based on exploration and discovery
• Halflings in the Mariner's Guild get an automatic positive bias from faction NPCs, but there's no straight-up ban on anyone else. Life's just unfairly easier when you're a halfling. Meaning there's a strong incentive to play a halfling if you want to be a sailor but it's not enough to ditch your preferred concept if you really want to play a dwarven master of the boarding axe.

What would make you play a dwarf next? Or a halfling? an Elf? Even... A GNOME?

Your argument of "keep X alive" is exactly why I feel it should be available to every major faction (and to everyone else probably) IMO. Druids (and indeed everyone else) should have ways to actively hurt the Peerage wthout having to resort to FD. Cursing the shit out of a Retainer would be an obvious one.

There are few to no effective ways to screw over a character long-term without killing them.

• Taking a hand or a leg off them requires a DM and is fairly permanent as it also requires a DM-granted reward to fix.
• Bestow Curse is utterly trivial to remove.

The closest we seem to have got recently was with the Ghylherd mutations, which often were strictly a benefit, but caused you to become outcasts from anything featuring the Peerage. Importantly, you got yourself fixed by  beating the Ghylherd. Imagine if that was scripted. It gives players game in chasing down either the person who applied the cursed item, or whoever they handed the key off to for safekeeping.

I think the key for this sort of move is that it should cost a good amount of Faction favour to purchase the item, so everyone isn't running around with half a dozen. And it shoudl give some sort of benefit to the person who applies it to the victim. to make it a more than just painting a target on your back.   

I think this is something that would be great to have available to any faction.

A selecion of favour store items applying spellfail, or -AC, etc or that had a "remote control" you could use to stun the wearer.
Anything where if you put that on your victim, they can't come back at you fully buffed as you, personally, have an advantage against them. 
So things Druids can put on servants of the king to leach their blood, or earthen chains the Recondite can use to apply speed penalties to a downed foe.

Because that way, to get free they have to beat you or buy you off. But they can't do it personally because you're holding the key to their shock collar.

The problem I have with it is that +15 is just too good. As we saw with Brimstone, there wasn't any danger associated with membership. and it completely removed the need to seek labs and go to free-PVP places. What it would mean is that all the people doing "dodgy" crafting would have the most secure places to work from.

Just having access to a secure and convenient +0 lab in Ticker let me blitz cheap recipes and discover a lot of Herbalism. 

I think it could work, though, if the model was like the Open Door Kitchen. Rather than an upfront cost, you have to pay a relatively small fee on entry every time.  If it was merely a +10 , that'd be a price worth paying for a moderate bonus and security. And it wouldn't eclipse random labs.