Project Spec

[LonelyNeptune]

Speaking of the Council GL, are there any plans to re-open the election or will we be lacking a Council GL indefinitely?

[Taunya]

It's waiting until after the Coronation. The Seneschal is supposed to be appointed by the monarch, who choses one based on what she hears about the candidates. And also they're making some coded changes to the position, so it's a good excuse to delay it a bit.

[Kinaed]

The bids will be re-opened as soon as the new Monarch is selected, allowing for some IC announcements coming from the Monarch.

I can confirm that the new code is in place.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

the point of all GLs being uplifted to psuedo-nobility at minimum. Belittling a GL's authority can be awkward.

GLs are not raised to noble levels; that players sometimes RP them as having these authorities is probably more a reflection of the players than anything else because, ultimately, GLs have no more practiced power than their small realms of influence -- outside of the most elite ones which grant Great Lord status (and noble rights by extension). While one would expect gentry to be respectful and generally defferential to positions such as the Poet Laudate, the Grand Magnate, the Prime Medicus, etc., they remain a very large place beneath the nobility and Great Lords themselves. The gap between #2 and #3 in 'help precedence' is very vast indeed for the rights and expectations and clout one can wield. Within the domains outside of Lithmore, GLs would find themselves unable to muster the same levels of cooperation as the nobility who rule those domains. A Merchant GL might be able to try to flex their power and authority into ensuring good trade deals, but ultimately messing with a noble who the governing Duke is in favor of (nobles are generally seen as having the favor of their leiges unless something specficic comes up to question that) would bring more consequence down on the Guild than on the noble. -- this is at least my interpretation of how the system works; the nobles have far fewer hurdles in bringing their resources to bear in a specific fashion (project) than Guild Leaders would. Even the higher GLs (Earl Marshall, GI, Lord Justiciar, etc.) probably would have a vastly difficult time concentrating efforts into a single project; I don't think the Kingdom has an overabundance of Knights, Clergy, and Reeves just sitting around ready to be directed into a single task: making an effort to improve one aspect of society would draw resources away from another for these Guilds/Organizations, hence the metrics system as it stands being a generally net-zero game: GLs need to pick where their limited vResources are directed.

Like the GI not being able to start a project for piety. Or the Justicar for lawfulness. ... Or even the Seneschal, not being able to start civic work projects. They'd have to clunkily approach a noble to start something that they would reasonably have to do, making them look pretty a bit redundant.

As for GLs, they are the workforce. They effectively own those below them. But somehow, the ability to affect meaningful change does not belong to them. A character who is seen as a leader, and as an educated and powerful member of a group, should hold sway in the actions and zeitgeist of that group. As it stands now, from my perspective, this is unrepresented.

I have no idea, personally, where this idea that Guild Leaders simply cannot affect change right now comes from. When I took over the Grand Inquisitor position, Piety was in shambles. I took IC actions to both ensure that Guild Members were directing thought towards it and for the allies of the Order to pitch in to bring Piety levels up. She effectively begged/beseeched/threatened influential people into aiding, bringing the Order's treasury to a sustainable level and Piety to a solid rank. This is, in effect, a 'GL Project'. Guild Leaders tend to have access to quite large amounts of money they can use to bribe other players into helping them. This idea that Guild Leaders cannot make changes related to their Guild seems lazy to me, which is one fear I have of the project spec: that it's going to encourage passive IP dumps without ever calling on the Role-Play to happen.

ie; a noble putting up a Project for 'Economics' and all merchant characters dumping their IP into it, causing it to easily succeed, even without it actually affecting their RP in any way. There doesn't seem, at surface level, to be any meaningful opportunity cost to not endorsing a project that comes up.

'However, many gentrymen will play at being noble. With enough power and money behind them, they can often arrange for their treading into the realm of noble rights to be ignored. For example, one would be wary about pointing out a powerful guildleader's violation of sumptuary, as he could then find an entire guild set against him.

This can cause resentment amongst the nobility, who differentiate their power as something that they are entitled to. Depending on the force of personalities and the connections which each side boasts, such a conflict could fall to either side. The gentryman might be put in their place, though it is equally likely that the noble might step back to avoid the complications of crossing him.

This statement, to me, doesn't suggest that Guild Leader's authorities exceed or even actually equal the nobility, only that at times certain gentry / GLs might be able to exert such an influence that they can go toe-to-toe with some nobles. This isn't a by-product of simply being a Guild Leader: Farra has, in the past (when she didn't even have the reach she does now!) confronted beloved Guild Leaders about breaches in sumptuary and never once had to actually bring a Reeve into the matter because, I expect, most people don't want to deal with a hyper-focused angry Farra. A noble willing to flex their powers can make even a non-noble Guild Leader miserable. A noble who was feeling that their rights were being infringed on by a gentryperson/GL could transition the debate to include the Reeves and Inquisition, as both have a clear investment in maintaining social standards (Sumptuary Laws for Reeves, Denying One's Station for Inquisition). Gentrypeople who ingratiate themselves to even either of these two groups can find themselves immune to many repurcussions, just as would make sense.

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In any case, this is a lot of words to say that I think Guild Leaders already have enough influence on City Metrics, and that the Project Spec should require a Titled Noble to initiate it. A Guild Leader could approach a noble with the promise of funds and support in order to be involved with the process (or even approach a noble with the threats and potential repurcussions mentioned in the 'help gentry power' helpfile a player quoted in GL's defense -- for Example, Farra might approach a noble with a Piety Project, be turned down, and all of a sudden the narrative might become 'You DONT want to help improve Piety? How INTERESTING. *Inquisition breaks into the noble's house and steals any mail to check for potential heresy*'.)

I can say that Nobles can find it very difficult to find meaningful RP. I was always able to more by making Farra dance along that line of 'Effective Noble' and 'Crazy witch', which not all players will find fun. I do, and even still the strain was often too much to handle. I love this project idea and would have adored it being around when Farra was a title noble; so long as they remain something that comes with some levels of risk (either through the potential of failure or the need to expand and make new friends) then I think they'll solve much of a noble's inability to affect change on-grid .. which absolutely pales compared to a Guild Leader's.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

In thinking about ways to ensure that Projects always generate Role Play by creating small levels of conflict (our bread and butter!), what about this:

Make half the positive gain of any project have a negative affect on another metric.

For example, a project giving a ++ to infrastructure might apply a — to economy, as materials used for the repairs are purchased at less-than-market cost, or something -- the rationale would be entirely up to the project maker and could be targeted to any metric that could be justified. This allows someone to be, on some level, 'against' the project -- a project benefiting Morale at the cost of Piety might raise the feathers of the Holy Order, for instance, or one against Lawfulness make the Reeves scowl at those managing it.

[Kinaed]

ie; a noble putting up a Project for 'Economics' and all merchant characters dumping their IP into it, causing it to easily succeed, even without it actually affecting their RP in any way. There doesn't seem, at surface level, to be any meaningful opportunity cost to not endorsing a project that comes up.

I agree with this being an issue, and I'm not keen on the proposal to make half of the metric gain go to a negative elsewhere because it being purely additive and a bonus is sort of what singles it out at the core... but.

If we wanted to make it effective to avoid the above, rather than being an IP dump, maybe somehow the noble and their RP partners' earned RPxp can come into play? IE, a noble sets up the project contributing the base IP for the project's size, and instead of other people contributing IP to achieve the final result, maybe every 500 RPxp the associated players earn awards the project with 'IP' (or an XP bonus, whatever)? The only issue I see then is how to get people to actually RP about the project rather than something else, but anyway...

Ideas are still welcome.

[Smithers]

Been trying to get time for a more thorough response but before I forget, I'd like to suggest that IP not be the only thing that can be used for these projects. Items and coin should be options as well, at maybe half 'price' and only allowed to be 50% max of the requirement?

Example:

Lady de Noble nearly unraveled her cloth of silver skirt on a crumbly road outside her estate. She wants it fixed Yesterday. She submits a proposal involving her neighbors and local masons, suggesting that in order to be successful, she has to gather 100 IP. As a family with holdings in stone quarries, she requests to split that up into
50 IP
10 IP as 2000 silver (200 silver = 1 IP per help improve)
40 IP as 70 blocks of expensive stone (8000 silver/ 70*expensive stone @115 silver apiece)

This lets people make use of existing IC connections that don't translate directly to IP and "get their hands dirty".

(And full disclosure, as a crafter-hoarder, it would make me incredibly happy to have more opportunities to sink excess items into something "worthwhile" instead of junking them or watching them decay.)