Poltics

[Nelkie]

I have an idea to simpfly the polictcal system.

There are 2 types of allgence
1. Personal
2. Orginization

1. personal is the allgence a single person has. They can use there allgence to support an orginization (a guild or a house), or a single person as royality. Note: when supporting an orginzation you would not be supporting a single person

2. Orginzation is the total allgence pooled by all the members of that orginzation. The leader of that orginzation, either be it a guild, house, or royal will determine what is to be done with the pooled allgence. A guild head would determine the trade points and which royal or house to support, etc...

Note: A the orginzation has to inform the NPC's in writng who the leader of the orginzation in advance of an event.

Please note: this system can let a house head or a royal tobe part of a guild. A rule can be put into place to prevent that if that is not desired.

What do people think??

[GM_Chris]

How do the people of the guild inform the GM staff who is the leader?

[Nelkie]

The guild head is specfied in the charter and the charter needs to be revised when a new leader is chosen.

If people do not want x person leading them, they leave the guild, try to convice people a newe leader should be chosen, etc.. Than the charter would eb updated. Less work all around, but still great for RPing.

[Todd]

Not being a dick. Really dont get it.

What does this help? How does this improve the system?

[Nelkie]

Here is some benifits with the minor change.

1. Allows greater roleplaying and orginzation structure for Guilds. Right now people follow a person which makes a guild very ridiged on how it operated and very dependent on the leader. By giving people the opition to have an orgization instead of a centeral person you can set up guilds to have the leader different than the person who recieve the allgenece points and handels the trade routes. The orginzation can be more focused on it's goals instead of the goals of a single person, etc.. It alows more freedom to create a guild system and how it is ran and governered.

2. It is easier to understand for new people how the poltic system works. Personal allgence can be given to a person (nobal), or an orginization. Simple. The controler/leader of an orginzation can give its allgence to another higher level orginzation or a single person (nobel). Keeps it stream lined and simple

3. Easier to explain how allgence buffing skills work. This skills only works for personal allgence, this skill can work or both, or either type, etc...

4. Easier tracking of people allgence expendutures for the NPC's. Instead of trying to calculate by peson, it can easly grouped by orginzations, etc..

5. Easier for PC for voting. Instead of trying to rember the person they are suppose to be supporting, they only to rember the orginzation they belong to and support it. This helps prevetn confusion and fustration for many PC's.

6. Allows house head and royality to be part of a guild with there personal allgence.

[dier_cire]

Ultimately, I do see the voting for a guild/house a much better solution as really I can support my guild but not necessarily the leader. It's like at your job, you may like it but you may not like your boss, but that doesn't mean you aren't going to do a good job.

[Todd]

Just my opinion.. but

Ease of NPC paperwork not withstanding,

1) The guild is the person in charge. He makes the decisions, He calls the shots. You dont like him and his ways? Leave the guild, have a Coo, kill him.

2) If your putting yourself behind a leader. (giving allegence) Then you should damn well better know who your giving it to.

3) Again, in my opinion only, not knowing who's in charge is contrary to #1, and ignoring #1 in my opinion leads to a LACK of roleplaying, not an inhancement of it. At that point your simply shifting a mechanicall burden to a mechanical benifit with no thought to reason or motivation.

[Peace420]

I would tend to agree with Todd, it takes the whole rp factor out of the political system on the guild level and turns it into strictly a #'s game. It also seems like it could potentially put all the power in 1 person's hand very easily if they controlled all the orgs in a house, the house and then were the royal too. The guilds people are the voters with the guild and house heads acting like the electoral college with the difference being it doesn't take 2-6 years to see a change if you feel like you voted for the wrong person you can change that in 1 event.

If you like the people you work with but don't agree with or like the boss then you either leave or stick it out and deal with it, if enough people don't like the boss qnd leave the boss will get fired or replaced because he can't keep a staff, that's the way it works in real life.

And I had the company discussion with a few people and I see it more like the guilds are stock companies and the houses are sort of like mutual funds the people are the stockholders and AP is the currency. In exchange for investing your currency in a guild or person you get a dividend (whatever that guild person or house offers). If you aren't happy with the return on your investment you can always simply cash in your stock and invest it somewhere else. I guess it's all in the point of view, I just don't think it applies to a job as well because you can ALWAYS find someone else to fill that workspot, there will always be more people to work than jobs available and the employers have most of the power and if one of their vice presidents decided to switch companies and takes a few people with them, so what, you fill those slots and move on. It obviously does not work like that in FH, there is a very finite amount of allegiance to be had (investor dollars) and the *companies* have to vy for those $$.

[Nelkie]

I think itis all of a point of view. 1 person can not control it all. I have tried and it does not work. The people have the final say and if they do not like the leader/orgization they move on. Instead of recruiting by leadership soly in the current system, you would recruit by what the orginzation has to offer which includes the type of leadership.

Yes, I will agree, the orginzation can lend itself to a more conslidated orginzation of guilds, houss, and royality to be one central enity that stream lines its govermental process and leadership.

There is no mechanical advantage expect for House head and royal can be part of a guild and in the current system they can not. Change the rules so this can be done and the system can work. It would all be in how the politcal nature of the orginzation if RP'ed from that point.

What is the theroy behind not allowing house heads or royality to support a guild with there own pesonal allgence points?

[GM_Chris]

Wait a sec.

You guys are switching mechanical terms and RP terms and mushing them together into a very bad soup.


Can a royal be part of a guild? In rp terms yes in mechanics no


But really it is the guild and the house who belong to a certain royal person.

[Peace420]

I think itis all of a point of view. 1 person can not control it all. I have tried and it does not work. The people have the final say and if they do not like the leader/orgization they move on. Instead of recruiting by leadership soly in the current system, you would recruit by what the orginzation has to offer which includes the type of leadership.

Yes, I will agree, the orginzation can lend itself to a more conslidated orginzation of guilds, houss, and royality to be one central enity that stream lines its govermental process and leadership.

There is no mechanical advantage expect for House head and royal can be part of a guild and in the current system they can not. Change the rules so this can be done and the system can work. It would all be in how the politcal nature of the orginzation if RP'ed from that point.

What is the theroy behind not allowing house heads or royality to support a guild with there own pesonal allgence points?

You said it right there, if the people don't like the leader\org they move on. I don't think changing it so that the org is the mechanical basis for recieving allegiance will make any difference in who stays or goes in an organization but it will make a difference in the way the mechanics work. You say you've tried, the reason it doesn't work for you is because the mechanics don't support one person running everything in the house autonomously.

And if you want to promote the organization over the leadership then just do it IG, like all the Crescent Moon does now. People don't follow Arthos neccesarily they become a part of The Phoenix Gaurd or the Guild of light and the org is what is focused on as opposed to it's leadership. The one person in the Crescent Moon who may actually have a dogged following because of who they are is Donovan and he isn't even a mechanical part of the house.

To me it sounds like the way you've handled the allegiance system is how you want the mechanics to work. Instead of the guild head handling their own resources and AP expenditure, someone else can mechanically do that, meaning that guild head would be a figurehead at best, just a puppet by mechanics.

I think the reason that you can't be a guild head +house head+royal is because there is a skill to give allegiance downward and with that skill you can do what you are talking about, a royal or house head support a guild. But if a GM could clarify that it would be helpful.

[Nelkie]

On the beucrate skill that alows one to pass down allgence points, the problem with it the points that are passed down are in the from of support points and can not be used when calculating trade or house points. So the skill is only useful when a guild has enough people to support it, but not enough allgence points to support it's current level. This is very rare that this happens so in my opinion makes the skill almost useless. Of all the time managing the allgence system for the House, I have never had a problem scrapping enough allgence points to make the minium requirements of the guild or house, but I have had problems with the trade point totals and the number of people requirements.

I don't have a real issue with the current system of supporting a person, but I personal like the idea of have the choice of supporting an orginization or supporting a person. But thats just me.

I think the hardest thing to manage in the current politcal system is the number of people showing up to an event that support ones guild/house/royal. I know erik and I have the same problem. We both have alot of members within our orgizations, but they rarely all show up on a constiant bases. It makes it hard to plan, grow, etc...

[Donovan Thynedar]

Wayne and I had a conversation about this, and the point that I stressed is that the political and economic systems are intrinsically intertwined. There can be no government save an oligarchy, and you can offer support for no one save the person for whom you work.

One potential solution was to divorce the political system from the economic system. Using the current structure all we'd have to do is replace the title of "Royalty" with "Trade Confederation" and make it clear that the system had nothing to do with loyalty or allegiance.

Politics would then become driven entirely by role-playing. People could follow who they wish, support who they wish, and their actions would carry more weight than some points on a sheet. Any form of government would be possible, and the characters are free to establish their own hierarchy. Money (resources) would influence power the same way it does in our world, instead of being linked through some awkward system.

[GM_Chris]

errr?


Lets use current mechanics to explain different forms of governments.

A group of peasants work for a noble.---Mechanically a bunch of peasants for a guild that then bring in food and other resources to the king. King intern gathers people to him to fight or turns the peasants into a fighting machine. Peasant keep doing what the Royal person says because they fear for their lives.

Merchant system---a bunch of peasant band togethe to form different guilds who bring in the resources. The merchants usually form under great houses that control alot of the political power. Royalty might have an army but the houses hold the real power.

Democracy----a bunch of differnt people get to gether and join various groups/corporations and funnle that money to 1 larger organization like say a house. Money is used to outfit the differnt people as a military. Military and Goods are not centrally held at all. People understand they hold the pwoer.