The Stranglehold of the Holy Order

[Taunya]

My feelings are mixed a little on staff control of first tier rulers. I think it likely has lead to stagnation, but I also appreciate a neutral third party to turn to if shit hits the fan- e.g. the Thieves in the Reeves situation mentioned in OOC chat.

I've never actually used the life-line myself, but I was prepared to as a last-ditch option once. When -SNIP-, my character went about gathering testimony from many characters, and hid it, telling a few people she trusted where to find it and to send it to the queen if -SNIP-. Never ended up needing to in the end, but it was a fun line of RP.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

My feelings are mixed a little on staff control of first tier rulers. I think it likely has lead to stagnation, but I also appreciate a neutral third party to turn to if shit hits the fan- e.g. the Thieves in the Reeves situation mentioned in OOC chat.

I've never actually used the life-line myself, but I was prepared to as a last-ditch option once. When it was looking like one of my characters was going to be framed by a reeve, she went about gathering testimony from many characters, and hid it, telling a few people she trusted where to find it and to send it to the queen if she disappeared/got arrested. Never ended up needing to in the end, but it was a fun line of RP.

I definitely get all of this, and I DO think that Staff should maintain a place where they can reprimand or remove GLs who go out-of-line a fair bit. However, I think this can be easily done without holding NPCs above PCs: Reeves from another domain might come in to do something; other vNPC Inquisitors might remove those abusing the code. But ALWAYS, I think, getting other players to do things against other players should be the go-to option. Is a Reeve abusing their power and the Lord justiciar not doing anything? Go to the Church! Or to the Tenebrae! I think Staff should only really get involved when (1) a player is using their position to shift the core theme of the game (a Grand Inquisitor saying good things about a mage) or (2) there is a group — a cabal, if you will — that refuses to use their thematic position to properly police the rest of the game (if a Grand Inquisitor refused to care that the Lord Justiciar was allowing flagrant abuse within his Reeves, for instance). It shouldn't be a "This player is mean and that player happens to be a GL so I'll just run to their thematic superior to make them stop being mean" option. If a Grand Inquisitor is acting shady as frak, go to the Earl Marshall, go to the Nobles, hell GO TO THE MAGES. Make their lives hell. KILL THEM. Abduct them. Abduct their family members. CREATE CONFLICT rather than choose "Let Staff Handle It".

[Niamh]

If a Grand Inquisitor is acting shady as frak, go to the Earl Marshall, go to the Nobles, hell GO TO THE MAGES. Make their lives hell. KILL THEM. Abduct them. Abduct their family members. CREATE CONFLICT rather than choose "Let Staff Handle It".

This would not only make Staff's experience on TI a lot more pleasant, but it would also make for a hell of a lot more fun IC. (Portion edited out for including too much IC info!) Doing something is so much more meaningful, even just story-wise, than a letter to NPCs. It makes ripples in a way background noise never could.

Disclaimer: That's not to say that folks should feel badly about contacting NPCs, of course. If you're at that point you're at that point. I think the point that was made by TLGD was an excellent one, though - live RP is so, so, so much better, and more selfishly it does prevent Staff from being put into the position of IC arbitrators, which makes us hate life (I shouldn't speak for all of us, but you get what I mean...).

[Voxumo]

I feel it's important to note that the power the Cardinal has has not changed since it became an npc exclusive role, nor has staff's influence on the order. When the cardinal was still a pc role, they too had the authority to remove a GI, and were often the ones players would go to to complain about a GI. In turn, the cardinal had the High Synod hanging over their head if they mucked up too badly, the Synod which was and still is, a staff controlled entity.

Nothing has changed in terms of the power dynamic, heck one could even argue the GI has more power now than it did in the past.

Just wanting to clear that up as this topic slowly takes a turn for the worse.

[Kinaed]

In the vein of having a mature, participatory conversation, let's please refrain from raising (particularly recent) IC situations, especially if the parties in question are emotionally invested in whatever happened. Instead, as requested at the outset, please focus on high level discussion.That is what I meant in my original post about commentary not being designed to criticize people or their RP. No one should feel like they're on trial for participating in the forums.

With regards to the overarching topic, Staff would love to leave TI in player hands, it's so much less work for us (as Niamh indicated). Unfortuntately, when we do that, things happen like - for some real examples - players trying to arbitrarily invent gun powder, the Order effectively becoming the Mage Guild, the Reeves effectively becoming the Brotherhood, and a dozen other examples exactly like those. What we do to combat this is that a typical response to contacting the Cardinal is that the Cardinal forwards the issue on to the correct parties unless there's a strong reason not to.

I think asking Staff to totally back out isn't really functional - we already are very hands off overall and respond pretty much exclusively to player-initiated plots, which means there's no Cardinal trying to ruin a GI's parade unless there's a player trying to use their own high level mojo to do so. Without our generally neutral 3rd Party presence on behalf of "the Realm" or "the theme", it just means player conflict is resolved without calibration. The losing party is going to be no less pissed off about it either way. Instead of complaints about how controlling the staff are or that we did something because someone believes we personally dislike Player A, the complaining looks like "Bob did X and shouldn't have been able to, and Staff should be doing something about it!"

I've been on both sides of the fence, and several players have been around to see both sides play out too. I just can't see removing staff NPC control points as the right solution or even te crux of the Order's image problems.

I rather think that it has to do with the Order itself being scarce in terms of numbers/visibility, and on top of that, being poor about delegating work to and trusting its lower members, which makes it hard for lower members to want to stick around. And maybe there's something to people feeling they have nothing to fear from an Inquisitor.

[LonelyNeptune]

What I'm taking away from this discussion is that we should re-examine when it's appropriate for the Cardinal to intervene. I agree that having the Cardinal as a staff fail-safe to protect theme is important - removing that won't fix anything. However, if players have a problem that can be resolved IC, it should be. Contacting staff via the Cardinal shouldn't be a substitute for IC interaction or using the gambit system.

How can we encourage players to use RP avenues to handle conflict when possible?

[Kinaed]

Well, the issue posited was that the Order doesn't feel dangerous and powerful. I don't see how the Cardinal has anything to do with that; they're pretty much an entirely off grid figure. There's no physical way that the three times in the last twelve+ months that the Cardinal was contacted (none of which resulted in anything more than a letter, and in those cases generally passing the ball back into PC hands) has anything to do with that.

[Voxumo]

What I'm taking away from this discussion is that we should re-examine when it's appropriate for the Cardinal to intervene. I agree that having the Cardinal as a staff fail-safe to protect theme is important - removing that won't fix anything. However, if players have a problem that can be resolved IC, it should be. Contacting staff via the Cardinal shouldn't be a substitute for IC interaction or using the gambit system.

How can we encourage players to use RP avenues to handle conflict when possible?

Just no. That isn't the issue and that isn't the point of this topic. The few times the cardinal has gotten resolved hasn't played a part in the current state of the order.


As for the actual topic, I think the order goes through phases of perception of power. For example, under Empena and Rothgar, the order was generally perceived as being a threat, whereas under some other leadership the order hasn't been perceived as a threat. I personally think it just comes down to how the leadership decides to run the order that the perception changes, with neither being wrong. An order perceived as weak could be doing surprisingly well behind the scenes, and said perceived weakness could be used as a tool itself.

[Taunya]

the Reeves effectively becoming the Brotherhood

The Threeves!

Back to the topic at hand, I'm wondering if there are some benefits that might attract more people to fill Orderly roles- especially clergy.
Perhaps an increased resistance to magic? They do often seem to be targeted by magely folk, which may be one cause for the turnover. The resistance could be written off as their time sweeping and dusting the Cathedral or something like that.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

The Grand Inquisitor does not have more power than they did before the removal of the Cardinal position except as far as authority within the Guild itself goes — power that likely never comes into play in the scenarios people have outlined. That their superior is played by someone who is able to act on RP without any potential for recourse in fact gives the Grand Inquisitor far less power insofar as interactions with others go.

I think that implementing a clearer policy on when NPCs should get involved can certainly help — it won't, by any means, help with what I think is a deeper problem of many players just not wanting to have to ever "deal" with the organization that is the most thematically ingrained into the culture. But, if Staff implimented a rule that before involving an NPC in a inter-player conflict that the person making the request had to have gone to a number of other sources to try to engage other players into that conflict, a lot of this would be solved. "Go to the NPC" should not be a first plan for players and should not be a viable alternative for creating larger-scale conflict.

A player using their "high-level mojo" to involve NPCs into player-driven conflict is, inherently, not really using their high-level mojo in a healthy way for the game, as their resources and supposed influence can be better directed at employing players to create a web of intrigue that relies on players building relationships with other players. Obviously, and as I said already, extreme cases should be dealt with, as should cases where there are IC relationships preventing consequence, so long as those IC relationships are explored by the players involved.

Back to the topic at hand, I'm wondering if there are some benefits that might attract more people to fill Orderly roles- especially clergy. Perhaps an increased resistance to magic? They do often seem to be targeted by magely folk, which may be one cause for the turnover. The resistance could be written off as their time sweeping and dusting the Cathedral or something like that.

I would personally HATE to see this particular thing. The Order SHOULD be the target of mage shenannigans because that's the FUN part of being an Orderite (imho)! I'm sad to report that precisely 0 people targeted Farra with suspicious magic while she was Grand Inquisitor . However, an increased Rec Level for playing these roles might go a long way; Mages get, I think, 80% or so free rec level just from raising their skills, and history has shown being an Orderite just as risky and a very needed role in the game.

Just no. That isn't the issue and that isn't the point of this topic. The few times the cardinal has gotten resolved hasn't played a part in the current state of the order.

The Cardinal removed the Inquisitors that you praise for being "a threat", so I'm not really sure how you can say that with a straight face. As Grand Inquisitor, a situation came up where the Cardinal was told Farra was doing something that she wasn't actually doing, but a letter came in pretty much saying, in polite and non-accusatory words, to make sure people didn't think she was doing This Thing. That definitely impacted how I felt I should play Farra, and resulted in me taking a step away from trying to impose Farra as a 'largely oppressive' type of Grand Inquisitor, which she certainly tried to be at times (usually to not-great success!). It was definitely sad to see that, rather than actually confront Farra or any of her allies on the topic, the players involved chose to just try to use an NPC to impact the inter-personal drama that I had hoped to remain on-grid.