The End of the Regency

[Kinaed]

Dear Players,

As you know, Caitrin is coming of age. Obviously, the regency is coming to an end and a new era is dawning. In this vein, several changes need to happen, and there are players who have significant investments that will be impacted as we shift from our current game to the future. Because of that, we want to tell everyone what we have in store and allow people time to digest, respond, and prepare.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN

ICly, the story is being developed as a plot right now. OOCly, here's what we plan to do to game structure:

1. Court will be dissolved to be formed into a new body, the City Council. The City Council is comprised of all non-covert GLs and all active nobles.
2. City Council Members (ie GLs and nobles) will be able to 'vote' for a city metric with an IC action that they're taking that period.
3. The metric that garners the most votes that week will go up by a large amount. The two runner up metrics will also go up by a smaller amount, and the least voted for or one-to-three random metrics will go down in line with the upward swing on those metrics that got the votes.
4. All city metrics will be supplied with impacts on the game. We are working out what those impacts are and intend to have them in play by the time this system comes into play.
5. Once per month, the staff will roll on one of the three lowest metrics to kick out a city event. For example, if health is low, perhaps there will be an attack of dysentery in Southside. If infrastructure is low, a section of the sewers under Church Street might collapse. If defense is low, some brigands might set up a toll booth on the road outside of the west gate, etc, etc.
6. A new role will be set up that is ALSO on the city council, the Sensechal. This role is open to any player in the game and has a six-month term limit. To achieve it, you need to put your hand in and go through the bid system to get elected (we think bids will work better if the pool of people is the whole game). If elected, you get: 1) a command that tells you what the current voting status of council members is so that you can coordinate and affect the vote prior to it being tallied and finalized, 2) a sweet stipend of silver, and 3) a posh office in the Palace or Town Hall (maybe both). <-- we acknowledge this role may not work out. If it does not, we will remove it.

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS

TI's current theme is sweeping and world-encompassing, but the game physically exists in Lithmore. As a consequence, players naturally try to interact with theme - calling upon the Duchess of Vandago or seeking to fight the war with Daravi - but there's so little meaningful in game leverage for these plots. To create a meaningful game experience, play needs to focus on where the characters are, and provide them leverage over their environment. We want to shift away from plots that touch on other domains or duchies and focus on giving people a good time RPing with and against other players to create real, tangible outcomes in their environment.

PHYSICAL CHANGES REQUIRED

We have two months before we need to get the systems in place for this. Staff are busy dividing up the labor, but we expect it to go something like this:

- (Done) Specs for code changes to allow City Council members and nobles to vote.
- (WIP) Specs for code changes to allow large-scale impacts to the game based on the health of various city metrics.
- (Done) Specs for code changes to allow the Seneschal to see the current voting status and automatically get a stipend.
- (Done) Updates to the current bid code to allow all players to participate, and rename it for the city Senschal role rather than the Regent.
- Updates to Lithmore's city help files, particularly to flesh out the various groups in Lithmore, what their goals are, etc. Help files to flesh out what each city metric represents.
- (Added) Spec for City Council members to raise topics and comment/vote on them without meetings so all timezone people can participate.

IMPACTED PLAYERS

As you can see from this restructure, things are going to change. We currently have nobles in court who will probably easily transition to having a role on the city council and playing local politics, but we also have some gentry players in Court who will be cut adrift with even less 'purpose' than they originally had. Those people shouldn't have their characters adversely impacted to a terrible degree, so we've decided that if someone is an Ambassador of X, or a Commander of Y, they will retain that role ICly - it's just that the focus on those titles as an in-game function will cease to be as important.

Court will still exist, but instead of as a guild, rather as a loose association of people who can hang out at the palace to plot and scheme instead of a coded guild structure. The City Council is the new coded structure that most of the Old Court members will simply automatically be members of.

FEEDBACK

What did we miss? Does anything in particular worry you about these changes? Let us know in this thread! Thank you!

[Tremere]

As I said on ooc, I am worried in so far as there isn't a system of checks and balances in place for Order/Reeves when it comes to the nobility like there has been before. Will this council then have that ability to sanction to act as a vessel for also securing noble rights? And for that matter a check on the nobility. Historically the Regent has been there also to check against nobles not acting like nobles and things like that.

I do admit, I will find it weird there not being a Regent anymore or an active Court guild. I've always liked having a Court guild even if I've grown really exhausted with being Regent. i was going to step down when Caitrin comes of age anyway, so it's not like I will be losing a job I wanted to keep, but I do think that it is important to have those checks.

I would still like to advocate for a subset of this sort of thing, with a Baronial Council, as we do have one ICly, but grant them a vote to deal with noble specific issues like Noble Marriages and the like. It would give a Court light feel to things and I'm not sure I feel like non nobles voting on things like a noble marriage or censure of a noble would be the most thematic thing. I know GL's are higher in rank than your average person, but we've had some people who end up as GL's who are very much more on the common classes, like Galen. (love the character, but I'm not sure how well nobles would take to a commoner, even if they are a GL, having a say on their weddings)

EDIT:

As having played Regent, here are some of the things that will need a vehicle for somehow, because that was the Regents role.

Protecting Noble Rights. If the Justiciar refuses to enforce noble rights, without the Regent or Court Gl there is no one really to make sure that they do. The Justiciar may have to report to the Council, but without that Big Brother position there, it becomes a little bit meaningless as the Council presumably couldn't threaten them with Treason charges for going against noble rights.

Ennoblement. I know it isn't used very often, but I do think that it is an important thing to have. There should be -some- method for upward mobility even if it is a difficult method.

The Regent actively oversaw investigations into the nobility so as to make sure that all due diligence was being done. They had an active role in brokering that sort of thing.

And of course the stuff I mentioned above.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

I understand that, in the past, the Monarch has been a Player Character. Is this going to be the case with Caitrin, or is she going to be entirely staff-controlled?

Also, a single week seems like a bit of a short period for the voting mechanic with the city council; has there been any consideration that maybe a two-week span be more favorable, to better allow players to talk amongst themselves about the issues and what needs the most pressing attention?

Is the Court Guild going away entirely? Ie, will the Council be a Guild? Making sure the ability to publicly see and mail the entire council would be wonderful; a "City Mangagement" guild for non-nobles in some capacity would be fun, too.. I can't help but wonder what will happen to positions like the Royal Historian or the Chamberlain if the Court guild is removed entirely!

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

As I said on ooc, I am worried in so far as there isn't a system of checks and balances in place for Order/Reeves when it comes to the nobility like there has been before. Will this council then have that ability to sanction to act as a vessel for also securing noble rights? And for that matter a check on the nobility. Historically the Regent has been there also to check against nobles not acting like nobles and things like that.

I do admit, I will find it weird there not being a Regent anymore or an active Court guild. I've always liked having a Court guild even if I've grown really exhausted with being Regent. i was going to step down when Caitrin comes of age anyway, so it's not like I will be losing a job I wanted to keep, but I do think that it is important to have those checks.

I would still like to advocate for a subset of this sort of thing, with a Baronial Council, as we do have one ICly, but grant them a vote to deal with noble specific issues like Noble Marriages and the like. It would give a Court light feel to things and I'm not sure I feel like non nobles voting on things like a noble marriage or censure of a noble would be the most thematic thing. I know GL's are higher in rank than your average person, but we've had some people who end up as GL's who are very much more on the common classes, like Galen. (love the character, but I'm not sure how well nobles would take to a commoner, even if they are a GL, having a say on their weddings)

Wouldn't specific scenarios such as this or the handling of a noble acting in a less-than-noble fashion be handled specifically by the monarch, or by a specific person the monarch assigns for the specific situation? I'm certainly in favor of having more thematic "nobles get whatever the frak they want, usually" stuff going around as I think a "Baronial Council" which almost always just speaks for the monarch cuts into the dark fantasy thing we have going on.

[Zeita]

I'm fine with pretty much everything above with one exception. I'm confident that the City Council will add a fun new avenue to TI for those that wish to pursue it and engage in the opportunities it opens up.

However, the one exception to this is the removal of the court, which I do believe plays an important role in the game and in the theme.

As a side note, I also would have appreciated having this discussed with the members of Court before being announced broadly, to give interested parties an opportunity to respond, rather than being blindsided. I had a lot of plans for the guild and a lot of ongoing threads, as did others, which feels generally disregarded.

[anietzschesweater]

Timeframes: 1 week is really short - GLs will have guild duties and such and this is a lot of added stuff on top - something to consider. I would suggest every 3 weeks so that people are giving time to really flesh out ideas, having scenes, build alliances, etc. One week turnover might burn people out quickly.

[Geras]

I second Zeita's comment on the Court.

Protecting Noble Rights. If the Justiciar refuses to enforce noble rights, without the Regent or Court Gl there is no one really to make sure that they do. The Justiciar may have to report to the Council, but without that Big Brother position there, it becomes a little bit meaningless as the Council presumably couldn't threaten them with Treason charges for going against noble rights.

Why not give the Council the power to press treason charges?

Here's my 2 cents.

Keep the Court intact. Make the Council as you described. Name the "Seneschal" as Lord Mayor or Rector or Lord Provost (or some other historical name for a similar position. Use the Seneschal name for a leader of the Court subject to the Monarch who sits on the Council?

[Applesauce]

Since the council includes all the existing nobles, it doesn't seem to me that Court is truly "going away" or that anyone should be worried. Renaming aside realistically it sounds like they're just adding the non-noble GLs into the existing Court guild.

Not being in Court myself maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I always thought it was just a guild that contained all the nobles. I guess a helpful question would be what's the CURRENT state of things, so non-Court folk can understand how it's really changing.

[Ava]

I haven't been around much to understand the function of the current Court, but I applaud staff for centralizing plots to the play area. I do hope that there is room for involvement in politicking for the little people--aides and such. Someone above mentioned chamberlain and court historian, and I think having these kinds of roles enables room for intrigue and all that for more people, even if they have no vote in matters. I guess that is probably the cool part about the Court, that it can support having and including those people in a formal sense instead of having them kind of guildless & without direct perks/involvement that being in a specific guild gives.

[Takta]

So, one of the major reasons for this shift is that the introduction of the plot system has led to a real blossoming of plot/RP focused outside of Lithmore. While this sounds wonderful on paper, with the rich world our theme inhabits, in practice it ends up being very difficult bringing the resources and conflicts of that world into Lithmore's RP. Simply too little is defined for interducal politics to remain a big part of our RP - and it also pulls staff attention and time away from the grid.

The council approach allows us to have a governing body that's much more focused on intra-Lithmore events and RP, which we think will trickle down to the rest of the playerbase much more effectively than larger political plots. It also means that the information we spend our time defining will enrich the physical world everyone, even players who don't use plots, is playing in.

We definitely appreciate the valuable larger-scale political roleplay we've been getting, and are sorry to shift focus away from it - but this move is really necessarily to keep TI focused on its core strengths and values. So it's true we could keep Court and the Council both, but the problem with that approach? The council would take the domestic focus of Court, and with us downplaying the foreign focus, that leaves Court precious little to do that isn't completely redundant.

To deal with noble business that was conventionally the Regent's place, we will probably use a mechanism of the Council voting on whether or not to send measures to Caitrin (who will be a staff-controlled NPC). Caitrin will tend to abide by player votes unless there is a direct contradiction to theme - and you all know how little we tend to intervene when we can manage to leave things in player hands!

A lot of details of this transition are up in the air, but we're committed to making sure the new system works to encourage RP for everyone. Please keep offering feedback.