Ooc notification of leadership challenge

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Skibbles
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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by Skibbles » Sat May 21, 2022 2:30 pm

I don't understand how every character that paid to be involved in a district/settlement, being notified that an election is on, can be interpreted as 'disengaging.'

If there ever was a mechanic that could engage a ton of characters super fast it's the start of an election, the running, and the outcome. Elections can easily drive the interest of dozens of players, and if a new and aspiring government wins the seat it can lead to monumental growth that can set the tone for months to come.

Or sometimes not. Either way the notifier plays no part in it other than giving equal access for the potential at a shot of what I've just outlined.

I get the impression there's an underlying current here.
Irongron wrote: [...] the super-secret Arelith development roadmap is a post apocalyptic wasteland populated with competing tribes of hand-bombard wielding techno-giants, and strewn with the bones of long dead elves.

So we're very much on track.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by TurningLeaf » Sat May 21, 2022 4:54 pm

Skibbles wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:30 pm
I don't understand how every character that paid to be involved in a district/settlement, being notified that an election is on, can be interpreted as 'disengaging.'
Are we pretending now that people are paying for more than the storage? Fudged level of interest, results based on fudged roleplay. Nah. Enjoy.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by -XXX- » Sat May 21, 2022 5:13 pm

It's a short and unassuming message that greatly helps preventing minor cliques from stealing elections on a fluke and ruining a settlement for everyone else for the next 4 months.

TBH I see only upsides there.


This becomes even more essential once we acknowledge the fact that an administrative can go on managing a settlement for a longer period of time than the standard 1 IG year term. After that point anyone can trigger the elections at any time however, so alerting the citizens about this taking place is far from unreasonable.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Sat May 21, 2022 5:19 pm

I'm a little perplexed about the motivation behind this thread, so I'm going to establish some points that I think most people agree on and move from there to attempt to explain and hopefully lead to a clearing up of my confusion.

1: Leading a settlement is a volunteer labor of love, much like being a Contributor. It requires some level of commitment, OOC as well as IC, but nothing on the server should ever become a RL-like obligation like the job you work to pay your bills- fun, not work mandatory obligation.

2: Elections are noteworthy. IC. RL. Both. Even when I don't like either of my local candidates or plan to vote for them, I can't help but notice the signs up on people's lawns and businesses talking about how awful this candidate is, or why this one is the savior of the city/state/country. Hear people arguing about them in stores and restaurants. See ten different articles about their virtues/sins in the newspaper/on the TV. It takes a willful act of consciousness to ignore the fact that an election is happening.

3: Politicians are more in the know with political-goings-on than non-politicians.

If we accept the above points as true, then look at the current thread, we seem to be implying that players of settlement leaders may never, ever have a three day break from the server for any reason at all unless they're willing to lose their leadership spot, which may otherwise have been very active and positive.

Losing this position under this proposal also seems to imply that it's deserved, and that despite the nature of an election, every player in the game should actively have to check the registrar themselves every three days to even be aware such an election is ongoing, lest they lose it/their chance to vote in it due to a secretly organized fly-by-night vote.

Discord doesn't even have to be a factor in this conversation for me to say that at my current level of understanding, I'm not exactly on board with the subject matter of this thread.
Last edited by Aelryn Bloodmoon on Sat May 21, 2022 5:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by Skibbles » Sat May 21, 2022 5:26 pm

TurningLeaf wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 4:54 pm
Skibbles wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:30 pm
I don't understand how every character that paid to be involved in a district/settlement, being notified that an election is on, can be interpreted as 'disengaging.'
Are we pretending now that people are paying for more than the storage? Fudged level of interest, results based on fudged roleplay. Nah. Enjoy.
Skibbles wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:30 pm
I get the impression there's an underlying current here.
Case closed.
Irongron wrote: [...] the super-secret Arelith development roadmap is a post apocalyptic wasteland populated with competing tribes of hand-bombard wielding techno-giants, and strewn with the bones of long dead elves.

So we're very much on track.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Sat May 21, 2022 5:29 pm

TurningLeaf wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 4:54 pm
Skibbles wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:30 pm
I don't understand how every character that paid to be involved in a district/settlement, being notified that an election is on, can be interpreted as 'disengaging.'
Are we pretending now that people are paying for more than the storage? Fudged level of interest, results based on fudged roleplay. Nah. Enjoy.
Are we pretending that we always had citizen storage and that no one ever paid for citizenship before it? Quick, re-write the history books, we've never had an elected official on Arelith before because no one ever paid to vote! :lol: :lol: :lol:
Last edited by Aelryn Bloodmoon on Sat May 21, 2022 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Bane's tyranny is known throughout the continent, and his is the image most seen as the face of evil.
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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by TurningLeaf » Sat May 21, 2022 5:30 pm

-XXX- wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:13 pm
It's a short and unassuming message that greatly helps preventing minor cliques from stealing elections on a fluke and ruining a settlement for everyone else for the next 4 months.
People keep throwing this idea around with no actual support or detail for how this theoretical clique or offline cabal can "ruin" a settlement for others. Especially if the majority of voters need an ooc notification to let them know the election is even happening. If something got too out of whack there appears to be a fairly robust amount of team support here. It's like, my word, people are worried that some event might occur that was unexpected and out of their control and that they might actually have to roleplay around.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by Skibbles » Sat May 21, 2022 5:56 pm

TurningLeaf wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:30 pm
People keep throwing this idea around with no actual support or detail for how this theoretical clique or offline cabal can "ruin" a settlement for others.
TurningLeaf wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 3:28 pm
I've come to the conclusion that the Arelith election system is a wheel of cheese encased in a rind of entrenched interest and disengagement. Elections aren't a plot, they're an ooc system.
Yeah.... people sure do throw that stuff around a lot.
Irongron wrote: [...] the super-secret Arelith development roadmap is a post apocalyptic wasteland populated with competing tribes of hand-bombard wielding techno-giants, and strewn with the bones of long dead elves.

So we're very much on track.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by TurningLeaf » Sat May 21, 2022 6:01 pm

Skibbles wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:56 pm
TurningLeaf wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:30 pm
People keep throwing this idea around with no actual support or detail for how this theoretical clique or offline cabal can "ruin" a settlement for others.
TurningLeaf wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 3:28 pm
I've come to the conclusion that the Arelith election system is a wheel of cheese encased in a rind of entrenched interest and disengagement. Elections aren't a plot, they're an ooc system.
Yeah.... people sure do throw that stuff around a lot.
That's what so many keep telling me. It's an ooc system. See for ex:
Flower Power wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 6:21 pm
The only alternative I can think of for having a less intrusive way of being given an OOC heads up about an election being called that doesn't result in random NPCs cluttering up our chatboxes, would be something like an "-election" command for the console that tells you either the time until the next election can be called for w/e settlement you have citizenship in, whether one can be called now, or if one is ongoing.
Does this mean we now get to hear about the actual ways the nwn dark illuminati can ruin a settlement for everyone? Or should we just keep chanting it like a mantra?
Last edited by TurningLeaf on Sat May 21, 2022 6:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by Inordinate » Sat May 21, 2022 6:14 pm

TurningLeaf wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:30 pm
-XXX- wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:13 pm
It's a short and unassuming message that greatly helps preventing minor cliques from stealing elections on a fluke and ruining a settlement for everyone else for the next 4 months.
People keep throwing this idea around with no actual support or detail for how this theoretical clique or offline cabal can "ruin" a settlement for others. Especially if the majority of voters need an ooc notification to let them know the election is even happening. If something got too out of whack there appears to be a fairly robust amount of team support here. It's like, my word, people are worried that some event might occur that was unexpected and out of their control and that they might actually have to roleplay around.
You must be new here to think the current configuration was anything but a response to people doing just that
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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by -XXX- » Sat May 21, 2022 6:15 pm

It's an IG mechanic intended to enhance the ongoing RP affairs rather than provide players with a tool to trump them.

And yes, we've had plenty of instances in the past where a minor faction managed to steal the elections only to subsequently drive everyone out of town with exiles and/or straight up plunder the city coffers to roll/shelf days later.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by TurningLeaf » Sat May 21, 2022 6:19 pm

-XXX- wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 6:15 pm
It's an IG mechanic intended to enhance the ongoing RP affairs rather than provide players with a tool to trump them.

And yes, we've had plenty of instances in the past where a minor faction managed to steal the elections only to subsequently drive everyone out of town with exiles and/or straight up plunder the city coffers to roll/shelf days later.
This seems a laughable reason for a roleplay server with such advanced systems overlay, to move to such a non-IC method of handling what should be (among) the best roleplay opportunities the server has to offer.

And beyond that? So freaking what. The town got poor. People got exiled for a few days RL. So what? Is this some winning or losing proposition? Do we have some method to convert the fictional currency to NFT? This turn of events sounds disruptive. But the flip side is stagnation.
Last edited by TurningLeaf on Sat May 21, 2022 6:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by Inordinate » Sat May 21, 2022 6:23 pm

TurningLeaf wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 6:19 pm
-XXX- wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 6:15 pm
It's an IG mechanic intended to enhance the ongoing RP affairs rather than provide players with a tool to trump them.

And yes, we've had plenty of instances in the past where a minor faction managed to steal the elections only to subsequently drive everyone out of town with exiles and/or straight up plunder the city coffers to roll/shelf days later.
This seems a laughable reason for a roleplay server with such advanced systems overlay, to move to such a non-IC method of handling what should be (among) the best roleplay opportunities the server has to offer.
Go read the discussion around the change to quarter rentals then apply all of that to settlements and how elections are handled.
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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by Amateur Hour » Sat May 21, 2022 6:24 pm

TurningLeaf wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:30 pm
-XXX- wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:13 pm
It's a short and unassuming message that greatly helps preventing minor cliques from stealing elections on a fluke and ruining a settlement for everyone else for the next 4 months.
People keep throwing this idea around with no actual support or detail for how this theoretical clique or offline cabal can "ruin" a settlement for others.
I'll bite.

Settlement leaders can--and often do--have a major role in directing events around their city. They have the power to rewrite laws (within the Charter for Guldorand, but otherwise it's broadly unrestricted). In a world with secret elections, it would be perfectly possible for someone to take over, say, Cordor, outlaw all hin from entering the settlement, require all citizens to wear 54 purple under penalty of death, evict all citizens they don't like, etc. and no one would be able to do anything about it for a full month (unless they hired an assassin, which we have established time and time again is an explicitly Evil act).

The OOC message is by far the least obtrusive way of ensuring that elections are treated as the public events they should be IC.

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Re: Ooc notification of leadership challenge

Post by Lindos » Sat May 21, 2022 6:29 pm

Feedback is noted, closing this thread now as it's either circling on itself or people are taking potshots at eachother.
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