Political Questions

[GM_Chris]

I was mulling around a very SMALL change next year, but will ofcourse not make the change if it means people will gripe about our rules changing.

Here is the idea: Currently if you form a house or kingdom you are forced to keep the lower organizations (guilds, houses). The division is artifically there via mechanics because you MUST have division of labor for complex systems. Trade routes mechanically are not all that complex and I understand 1 person can do it all, but if this was not a fantasy game then you would have to put people in charge of each trade route. This gives people automity and thus tests their morals because then they have the ability to dip or not dip into the pickle jar.

Even though we have created this mechanically it has been misconstrued, missused, and frankly ignored. So why fight it? I suggest that once a house is formed, if you meat X amount of people and influence you can do trade rotues without keping the individual guild names. This bypasses the 2 or more guild thang and would make some things easier on the brains.

I would then move the mechanical division to a RP division via plots. Forexample force a house to deal with 2 trade route plots at exactly the same time over and over again to force you to put underlings in charge.

Now for a completely and less likely to ever change issue:

I also understand that people are more important than influence. Now ideally guilds will fight for trade routes thus needing more and more influence. YOu guys do not fight for trade rotues so perhaps that was not the best of ideas. Any thoughts to make points mean more?

-Chris

Starve us?

As for the house thing, I dislike the idea. Say for instance a house is formed but then you downsize. You can't just drop one guild and let the house crumble (or shore it up within the time limit). The whole organization collapses with nothing left.

I could see letting just one guild support a house, and then still doing the plot thing possibly though.

[GM_Chris]

Hmm

LOL

Reid, apparently we're not supposed to agree anymore.

I like the idea, but with one modification. Why not just say that upon reaching a certain size a guild "graduates" up and becomes a house? They gain the ability to produce commodities and support additional trade routes. If they fall beneath those numbers and don't alter their level they get dissolved just like any other organization.

Feasibly, you could also scale your royalty in the same way.

I'd also like to see a "support sink" somewhere in the system as well. Something minor that a guild, house, or royal could do with any support that does not get spent on trade routes. Maybe cheaper commodities? Bonuses akin to those for increased wealth levels? Overspending for additional route production/protection? Something?

LOL, I agree with Taki. On that we aren't supposed to agree. heh.

And one can lower a guild's level? I wasn't aware of this.

[GM_Chris]

nope cannot lower guild level

I'd also like to see a "support sink" somewhere in the system as well. Something minor that a guild, house, or royal could do with any support that does not get spent on trade routes. Maybe cheaper commodities? Bonuses akin to those for increased wealth levels? Overspending for additional route production/protection? Something?

Maybe find a SP equivalent to the resource bonuses for buildings and such.

[GM_Chris]

Ok I was talking to my brother about the people/support point question I had. The question was how to make support mean more.

Through that conversation I realized what was wrong, now this will sound raw so no one freak out because I am not going to suggest a giant rule change, infact there is no rule change suggestion here.

Currently, people matter alot. The way the economy system flows is people organize into guilds. These guilds gain in levels by requiring more people and more support. People are the biggest problem. The more people you have the more levels, the more routes, the more "stuff" that can be brought in.

On the back end route totals are based on population ONLY. Basically, we determine how much a given PC populist can bring in based on the population of the player base so it is no wonder that people mean more than support.

People can then build improvements to increase yield. This increases support slightly. All improvements are the same for each category of resource

Consequence: Political people get a bit of the shaft, AND the game doesn't feel quite right.

How it should work.

We have 3 categories of resources: Those needed to live, those needed to fight, those that give cool magic stuff.

The things needed to live should be HIGHLY based on population totals. Infact the more people the more "stuff" that should be brought in. Improvements should not be needed to keep up a "living" amount of this stuff, but only needed to increase wealth levels, and as an investment into other things. The good thing about owning these should be: 1) they are easy to get, and 2) easy to manage 3) high yield low money per unit 4) low level of investment to see a profit.

The next level stuff is needed to fight. This stuff should be less geared toward population and more geared toward needing improvements. Basically, Iron and Leather should give a lower value initially, but the improvements have a MUCH greater effect on yield. Basically you can get these, but you will not see a payout until you develop them.

Lastly we have mystic. Mystic should yield nearly NOTHING without improvements. These improvements should be the most costly, BUT give the greatest increase in yield. These improvements need the most amount of support points, but the least amount of people.

So what do people think of what I have said in theory. I am not saying anything is going to change, or what those changes should be. I am also not looking for people to start screaming that they will be screwed because that wouldn’t happen either.

Makes sense to me. In fact I was noting that currently the biggest level grind of FH is support. It's easier to just use a few key people for massive support and then the rest is just bodies. Previously, we were looking into upgrading our mines but it was cheaper just to find another route than do that.

Without glancing at the rules, long as the upgrades are based on the previous or current type, it sounds interesting. ie upgrade in survival is another survival, upgrade leather/steel is either the other one or survival but at a higher rate. I think it already works this way but not looking at the book.

Maybe a modified model based on the attendance of the previous event geared towards the concepts mentioned?

[GM_Chris]

Well finding another route is not an option.

The model is set up with finite routes so eventually you must improve. Infact most routes are gone until more people start playing.

So you're saying adjusting the way the routes are figured will fix the need for people vs the tremendous excess in support pts?
I just don't see it, in order to do any of those improvements you need to spend resources so your solution sounds like the shell game to me. Put more basic stuff into the game but make it so that getting more of the other things requires spending more of those basics.

Am I missing something here where support pts enter into this?

[GM_Chris]

Yeah Erik you are, but before I explain yself I need a question answered.

What would happen to the game if people voted for an org instead of a person? I know some have advocated this in the past.

Example: You end the event you say you are supporting guild evil toad instead on say I am supporting Atrum of guild Evil toad?

Guild member count is derived as it is currently by adding up the people who are supporting the guild.

What we would not know as GM's is who the leader is and who to put the resources into.

Am I missing anything? Would it be better? IS there a way around it?

[GM_Chris]

I wanted to restate what I am looking at doing in what I hope is a more concise. Currently, a guild requires so many people (up to 6) and a certain amount of support points (55 at 8th level). This makes the guild very dependent on people and not so dependent on points. House and royalty only require a certain amount of support with NO people requirement. In addition you can create either a house or royalty without a guild. The downside of course is to really take advantage of the setup you would be silly not to create guilds as long as you have the people necessary to create them.

If that paragraph doesn’t make sense then please post a question.
Next, I need to restate why we force people mechanically to split off into guilds. The reason is because complex organizations take multiple people to run. You cannot have 1 person micromanaging all aspects of a business/government/kingdom. You have to hire tax collectors and task masters to effectively govern a population. Therefore, we force people to maintain a certain amount of people to abstractly represent the need for that division.

I was thinking that there could be a better way, but I also do not want to change the rules too much. Well I have come up with something, and in my mind this is a conceptual change more than a rule change, but as you all know I am a little crazy.
Here goes:

What if we simply said you need 1 person to be in charge of any particular aspect of an organization. An example of an aspect of an organization would be trade routes, market places, commodities , and the military. Resources/commodities/military points would be put into the envelopes of the people who are in charge. The people who are authorized to be in charge of any aspect of an organization would be determined by the head of the organization. Head of organizations would be voted on as they are now.

So basically, if you missed it, instead of saying an 8th level guilds MUST have 6 people, we will remove that requirement and instead say the number of things you can do is determined by how many people you have. If you have 12 people then you can have 12 trade routes assuming you have enough support points to manage that many.

What else changes? Well we can blur the lines between guilds, houses, and royalty by simply increasing what you can do by the amount of support points you have. This allows you to conceptualize the organization better. You can have 1 person in charge of things or 10 I don't care that is up to you.

Oh and I bet a few of you are wondering about support points and organizational levels. I do not see much changing for the player here because a lot of this will happen on the back end. What I want to do is limit the discussion on specifically this change and what your thoughts are on it are. I do not see this as that big of a thing. I would rate it as a tweak since technically it accomplishes the same thing as before and I am really just framing it differently. If you see it as HUGE then ask questions I may not have explained it well


Thanks!

[WayneO42]

So, what you are saying is you would like to see all organizations lumped together. No more distinction between RGO, RRO, and RPO. What an org can do is based on the number of people it has.. Is this correct?

[GM_Chris]

I have not gotten that far yet, but yes that could be a possibility. I would add that it is not just people, but support.

People would give you the right to do something, but each "something" requieres support to "fuel" it.

The problem with combining the 3 orgs into 1 would be that it may seem to people we are rewritting the entire political system and people would scream about our ever changing rule set. If that would be the case I think we could do as I suggest, while maintaining the orgs as they are in the book. In my mind 3 orgs or 1 org it is all the same in my mind but I am a highly abstract thinker.