Settlement Election Integrity

[Xerah]

Honestly, I thought there were term limits already. I know it was discussed a lot in dev chat back when.

After about 3-6 months, it's probably a good idea to step aside and let someone else take a turn at the wheel, which is how I've always done it. Obviously, there have been some great longer term leaders in the past, so it's not a knock on them in any way. Change is what keeps me coming back.

All of Titania suggestions are very good.

[Drogo Gyslain]

Honestly Quadruple still sounds cheap.

What about 25,000 yearly, on top of housing?

it would basically equate to every 3 months of in real life time. you would have to do four to five writs worth of work or something.

[BlankStare16]

What about 25,000 yearly, on top of housing?

Housing is a big ask there. There are plenty of people who would like to have quarters in certain settlements who just can't get them. Barring those folks from citizenship/elections would not be ideal.

[Xerah]

Also, known max limits also means that before the 3 month mark, a leader could do some fun mentor RP for someone to take over (this doesn't usually happen since the person just keeps running until they lose).

I do think automated election calls will be necessary because if not, the election caller will deal with a lot of negativity (both IC and OOC) from other players for "calling it early".

[Algol]

To be honest 3 months feels like too short for some long term plots etc. to develop. If someone has grandiose plans or their RP has them become a dictator of sorts, it'd be detrimental to it.

[The GrumpyCat]

To be honest 3 months feels like too short for some long term plots etc. to develop. If someone has grandiose plans or their RP has them become a dictator of sorts, it'd be detrimental to it.

Then they can set up someone else as a puppet of sorts, and whilst 'become a dictator of sorts' might sound fun in theory, in practice I'm not really sure it would be? Not for everyone else - not in the very long term.

[Drogo Gyslain]

What about 25,000 yearly, on top of housing?

Housing is a big ask there. There are plenty of people who would like to have quarters in certain settlements who just can't get them. Barring those folks from citizenship/elections would not be ideal.

No I meant on top of the housing, not coupled with housing.

We already have to pay the housing costs on a yearly (broken up quarterly) basis, so citizenship could be a yearly (or broken as well) tax to remain a citizen

[Drogo Gyslain]

personally, I think the injection of term limits into the lore would be a step far towards putting modern day sensibilities on politics into a fantasy environment.

while democracy is one thing and voting has always been something that population has done to select anything, the idea of a term limit or a limitation on how long someone can stay in office is something that would need to be brought up and discussed at length in character.

I do agree though that there does need to be some kind of limit or at least the opportunity for people to choose more frequently. having automatic 2-year timers to trigger an election if one has not happened within the most recent in-game two-year cycle seems like a little bit more reasonable of a compromise.

because currently there are already multiple in-game ways to deal with or eliminate somebody from office or force them out using mechanical functions. but it would at least give people the chance to reaffirm that this person should stay off it because there are plenty of times where there is no better candidate than the person in office to stay there. look at Falgrim, who was a great example of an enduring leader.

if the role play justifies someone's staying in a role of leadership for more than a two to three months in-game period, that shouldn't be mechanically punished due to all of a sudden. we wanting limits and turnover.

I do believe there is a happy balance that can be achieved.

[Hazard]

It might be off topic and detract from the genuinely great ideas, but ...

I sort of think adventurers (pcs) shouldn't really be involved in politics as much as they are. It just feels a bit odd to have mostly little gods running the show and voting for each other. There's allegedly thousands of citizens in a city, but a handful of adventurers end up deciding which of the adventurers will be the leader.

Lessening their political position could be one way, like ... Instead of making them Chancellors/Coronals/Thanes/Whatever, they just get to be a mayor. Have NPCs take the real leadership roles. An NPC is Commander of the guard/military and not a player. And so on.
People just get very weird when you give them authority, even if it's imaginary authority.

There's plenty of political/diplomatic stuff you can do within factions and settlements that isn't being the "leader" of the settlement.
Just my personal opinion, not a suggestion but just something I want to voice.

[Drogo Gyslain]

It

Lessening their political position could be one way, like ... Instead of making them Chancellors/Coronals/Thanes/Whatever, they just get to be a mayor. Have NPCs take the real leadership roles. An NPC is Commander of the guard/military and not a player. And so on.
People just get very weird when you give them authority, even if it's imaginary authority.

That's... literally how it works now. Like, that's exactly what every elected officials is. The Chancellor of cordor is beholden to the monarchy, the high sherriffs of guldorand is under the evermeet table and thay and everyone who sponsored the construction... bendir literally so a mayor, Myon while it does elect a coronal is still technically under evermeet.

All of the settlement leadership politics is like this, and they are at least glorified mayors running and organizing for small player based groups like the cordorian navy, the hawkin or the skull crag rangers.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Term limits are probably fine for things like chancellor, sherrif, and even mayor in bendir. Like Drogo up above I would worry about replacing it with nothing, but doing settlement leadership right likely means a large coalition so there would be plenty of "replacement" options to keep the party rolling. That does however bring into question how good of a job it would do in "giving others a chance" or "Keeping things fresh".

King is a bit different...

[Hazard]

It

Lessening their political position could be one way, like ... Instead of making them Chancellors/Coronals/Thanes/Whatever, they just get to be a mayor. Have NPCs take the real leadership roles. An NPC is Commander of the guard/military and not a player. And so on.
People just get very weird when you give them authority, even if it's imaginary authority.

That's... literally how it works now. Like, that's exactly what every elected officials is. The Chancellor of cordor is beholden to the monarchy, the high sherriffs of guldorand is under the evermeet table and thay and everyone who sponsored the construction... bendir literally so a mayor, Myon while it does elect a coronal is still technically under evermeet.

All of the settlement leadership politics is like this, and they are at least glorified mayors running and organizing for small player based groups like the cordorian navy, the hawkin or the skull crag rangers.

Yeah, but like .. More.

[Drogo Gyslain]

It

Lessening their political position could be one way, like ... Instead of making them Chancellors/Coronals/Thanes/Whatever, they just get to be a mayor. Have NPCs take the real leadership roles. An NPC is Commander of the guard/military and not a player. And so on.
People just get very weird when you give them authority, even if it's imaginary authority.

That's... literally how it works now. Like, that's exactly what every elected officials is. The Chancellor of cordor is beholden to the monarchy, the high sherriffs of guldorand is under the evermeet table and thay and everyone who sponsored the construction... bendir literally so a mayor, Myon while it does elect a coronal is still technically under evermeet.

All of the settlement leadership politics is like this, and they are at least glorified mayors running and organizing for small player based groups like the cordorian navy, the hawkin or the skull crag rangers.

Yeah, but like .. More.

well how much more is more? settlement RP and leadership role play is meant to be the next step beyond just being a simple adventurer. it's meant to be the natural evolution of a character, pushing them out of the field and into a position leading and nurturing the next generation.

having a bunch of NPCs just running everything is already what we have. we don't roleplay as King Edward or the elves of ever meet or as adjutant winter foot or Khagdar or Mithreas.

as players, it's up to us to as the settlement leaders become the people that teach the next generation that helps set things up and be the mediators between the true leadership NPCs of the settlements and the people who just started today.

honestly, I think that a lot of times the settlement leadership doesn't do enough with the rolls and a lot of people get stuck in between trying to still be an adventurer and at the same time lead the settlement.

people who wind up in the leadership roles sometimes don't have the resources that they think they will become in a settlement leader or the direct involvement with the DMs that the role kind of implies. so you're left figuring out how to do this with the support of all of the previous leaders by your side.

[Hazard]

That's... literally how it works now. Like, that's exactly what every elected officials is. The Chancellor of cordor is beholden to the monarchy, the high sherriffs of guldorand is under the evermeet table and thay and everyone who sponsored the construction... bendir literally so a mayor, Myon while it does elect a coronal is still technically under evermeet.

All of the settlement leadership politics is like this, and they are at least glorified mayors running and organizing for small player based groups like the cordorian navy, the hawkin or the skull crag rangers.

Yeah, but like .. More.

well how much more is more? settlement RP and leadership role play is meant to be the next step beyond just being a simple adventurer. it's meant to be the natural evolution of a character, pushing them out of the field and into a position leading and nurturing the next generation.

having a bunch of NPCs just running everything is already what we have. we don't roleplay as King Edward or the elves of ever meet or as adjutant winter foot or Khagdar or Mithreas.

as players, it's up to us to as the settlement leaders become the people that teach the next generation that helps set things up and be the mediators between the true leadership NPCs of the settlements and the people who just started today.

honestly, I think that a lot of times the settlement leadership doesn't do enough with the rolls and a lot of people get stuck in between trying to still be an adventurer and at the same time lead the settlement.

people who wind up in the leadership roles sometimes don't have the resources that they think they will become in a settlement leader or the direct involvement with the DMs that the role kind of implies. so you're left figuring out how to do this with the support of all of the previous leaders by your side.

Lessening their political position.
Instead of making them Chancellors/Coronals/Thanes/Whatever, they just get to be a mayor. Have NPCs take the real leadership roles. An NPC as Commander of the guard/military and not a player and so on.
People just get very weird when you give them authority, even if it's imaginary authority.

[Drogo Gyslain]

well now all you're doing is remove them all player agency from being able to do our own role play at higher levels and giving it back to a mechanical system and putting installed non-playable characters that don't do anything that are already in place.

Clarissa in The Grove for the druids, Edward and Jennifer corridor in corridor most of the NPC faction noble houses in cordor, a good number of the dwarves Mithreas and the elven guard commander standing in the elven halls in the elven quarter, All of the NPC faith leaders in the temples that are already there that the DM's take over.

we have well over 200 players online at any point in time. we have the player base to support having settlement leadership, be a consistent part and be effective. the fact that it's not effective isn't a testament to the fact that we don't have a bunch of good players. it's a lot of times the fact that we don't have enough cooperation between those players.

honestly I wish they were more higher level settlement interaction then there has been up to this point.

[Eyeliner]

Lastly, I think citizenship cost is too cheap. At least with the current economy, 10,000 is a much quicker, almost simple earn than when I first started in 2010. I would rather it quadrupled than halved.

Gods yes... 10K is like a drop in the bucket. We have people with bank breaking levels of gold... I would even argue 100k is a fair price.

Maybe voting rights and settlement storage could be separate things? I mean I certainly have characters who are citizens just to use a bank and don’t care about the settlement politics

[BlankStare16]

well now all you're doing is remove them all player agency from being able to do our own role play at higher levels and giving it back to a mechanical system and putting installed non-playable characters that don't do anything that are already in place.

I think there's been a thing recently where "player agency" is being thrown around as if it is a sacred cow.

IMO it would be great if the NPC settlement powers were all much more active, and acquiescing to them is just part of what the PC settlement leaders have to deal with. It's a lot more politically realistic and interesting.

[Drogo Gyslain]

I think there's been a thing recently where "player agency" is being thrown around as if it is a sacred cow

.

Player agency and independent storytelling is the entire basis of Arelith. No one is the Main Character but the dms aren't here 24/7. We get to make our own unique and beautiful story and if you peel that away and reduce us to just a bunch of roaming adventurers it removes any chance at something more and better.

There are plenty of servers and entire games that that's the entire thing, your just playing in their world.

In Arelith I get to leave an impact, I get to leave a legacy I'm not just following a bunch of quest markers from waypoint to waypoint. I'm in a dynamic, evolving world with history, lore, and above all else, customized environment. This isn't the glitzy house holding of FFXIV, nor is it the polished beauty of BDO. Nwn is old, it's rusty, but it has charm, polish, laquer, time and beauty put into it. I get to discover the legacies of hundreds of players before me, read notes and books written worthy of real irl libraries, and make things that last actual generations. Fixtures and legacies older than actual IRL people.

You say it's a sacred cow? Your god damn right it is.

And Arelith wouldn't be what it is without all of us doing it together.

IMO it would be great if the NPC settlement powers were all much more active, and acquiescing

And then you would lose everything that takes some of that burden off the DMs. They do so much and the settlement leadership gives us an opportunity as players to step up and do for pcs what normally only dms get to do.

We don't need more hollow NPCs like the archmage of the arcane tower or Thoramind who are remnants of player actions 15-20 years ago, we need more players filling the lead roles and making their impacts to spread the stories and be the leaders their successors want to become.

[BlankStare16]

I think there's been a thing recently where "player agency" is being thrown around as if it is a sacred cow

.

Player agency and independent storytelling is the entire basis of Arelith. No one is the Main Character but the dms aren't here 24/7. We get to make our own unique and beautiful story and if you peel that away and reduce us to just a bunch of roaming adventurers it removes any chance at something more and better.

There are plenty of servers and entire games that that's the entire thing, your just playing in their world.

In Arelith I get to leave an impact, I get to leave a legacy I'm not just following a bunch of quest markers from waypoint to waypoint. I'm in a dynamic, evolving world with history, lore, and above all else, customized environment. This isn't the glitzy house holding of FFXIV, nor is it the polished beauty of BDO. Nwn is old, it's rusty, but it has charm, polish, laquer, time and beauty put into it. I get to discover the legacies of hundreds of players before me, read notes and books written worthy of real irl libraries, and make things that last actual generations. Fixtures and legacies older than actual IRL people.

You say it's a sacred cow? Your god damn right it is.

And Arelith wouldn't be what it is without all of us doing it together.

Players can have an impact on the game world without being in control of everything. A big name settlement NPC saying "I'm going to do a thing, deal with it" does not suddenly render players pointless. It creates a story for them to engage with.

DMs get to collaborate in the storytelling too, often through the medium of NPCs doing things. But it feels like whenever I see a big settlement NPC do a thing, folks come back with "But that NPC has stepped on my player agency!"

[ReverentBlade]

Terms limits are just ignoring the will of the settlement population and are undemocratic. Punishing leaders for being good at it is a bad idea.

The constant obsession with character turn-over, be it the sacrifice system, the unrelenting class changes without a single damn given about the characters they break, and now term limit discussion, is extremely frustrating to deal with. Long term characters are the bread and butter of your narrative arcs. Please stop hating them.

[Drogo Gyslain]

Players can have an impact on the game world without being in control of everything. A big name settlement NPC saying "I'm going to do a thing, deal with it" does not suddenly render players pointless. It creates a story for them to engage with.

DMs get to collaborate in the storytelling too, often through the medium of NPCs doing things. But it feels like whenever I see a big settlement NPC do a thing, folks come back with "But that NPC has stepped on my player agency!"

And that's the point. It's a collaboration. Settlement leadership is a partnership between Players and the DMs. We had a few bad actors work against the system.

If anything, that just gives us the opportunity to work on fixing gaps and shows people DO care and do want to be involved, but maybe work from a more IC perspective instead.

instead of reducing the role of a settlement leader, make it more important that they do their jobs. don't expand their capabilites and responsibilities, but put more emphasis on them doing what's given to them to manage. Without breaking the FOIG veil too much, there have been several major events recently that have made for some pretty significant uses of the faction and settlement leadership roles, and some major changes have seen really interesting results come about.

So instead of trying to reduce what the role can do, maybe a bigger IC push to make it more valuable.

And while my initial thought on term limits might be a bit... seperative to breeching the IC/IRL veil on thoughts and ideas within setting, maybe that's something that could hold people accountable more. They don't get a choice in the election timing, or pick their opponents really.

again, there is a happy balance here, we just need to find it.

Terms limits are just ignoring the will of the settlement population and are undemocratic. Punishing leaders for being good at it is a bad idea.

To Echo this sentiment as well, Term limits are not the way to go, but maybe set election cycles would be. Push people to make their voices heard, or at least give them the opportunity to.

[Old Lies Die Harder]

The definition of player agency that empowers small groups of players to remove agency from the majority of the playerbase over long periods of times is an invalid one, and anyone that subscribes to it should seriously consider migrating to singleplayer games instead of collaborative multiplayer storytelling exercises.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a not-insignificant number of members of our playerbase who either struggle to understand this or are unwilling to abide by any principles other than those which secure their own agency. It should be a point of embarrassment for the server as a whole that this number is unsurprising.

34% of votes is a full third of votes that are submitted inappropriately and in violation of rules. Clear rules. I could spend a lot of time criticizing Arelith's muddy language and overly complex structure of exceptions and 'case by case' inconsistent rulings, but not on character votes. That particular area of the rules is very clear and has been for a long while.

This tells me that clearly, we need a solution beyond an instruction of "please roleplay appropriately." An out of character hard term limit, while harsh and disruptive to 'player agency' isn't a bad solution, especially if it's put on a cooldown. We have a handful of out of character rules that exist because we've found that dealing with things in character is not effective in certain circumstances. We use these policies to mitigate the abuse that bad actors can perpetuate on others and the server narrative as a whole while the staff figure out who did a bad when and punish them.

For example:

• The 48-hour-rule (and its predecessor the 24 hour rule) combats inappropriate pvp from flaring player tempers and prevents chain ganking.

• The quarter/shop ownership rules partially insulate limited server resources from inappropriate hoarding.

• Prohibition (and mechanical enforcement thereof) of pickpocketing the same player in 24h.

• Mechanics changes that prevent 'resource bombing' like it was done 10 years ago.

There are more. I'd encourage others to fill them in.

These all take away your ability to do a thing in exchange for preventing smaller groups from dominating others into a miserable experience by not roleplaying appropriately.

34% of votes are not roleplaying appropriately. It's time for an automated OOC measure to mitigate the effect that this full third of cast votes while the staff crunch through disciplining the repeat offenders. Hard term limits sound great.

And it's also time to come down harder on the people who are repeatedly disciplined for utilizing their agency to make everyone else's time suck. I mean beyond removing them from the voting system. Baldur's Gate 3 is a fantastic game. I hear people are pretty excited about Dragon's Dogma 2 as well. For those who can't handle abiding by the simple request of not cheesing settlements for power over other players, maybe it's time for a permanent vacation to one of these single player resorts.

tl;dr, Player agency that relies on robbing other players of their agency is invalid, we have OOC rules in place to mitigate damage from abuse, implement term limits as one of these methods and ban people who are cheesing the settlement system.

[Hazard]

I'm going to be so unpopular (if being more unpopular is even possible for me) with these opinions, and I'm fully aware I'm probably a super-minority here, if not entirely alone but . . . . .

No one is really a leader of anything, and the fact that PCs keep trying to act as if they are "The Leader, chosen by THE PEOPLE" only makes me think even more so that we aren't capable of handling the role and the role should be lessened in importance if not removed.

I just don't think there's as much narrative value in calling yourself The Supreme Leader, and having some people stand around telling others to HALT, as is being implied.

The Chancellor isn't the leader of Cordor, King Edward is. Which ever Dread Matron/Tyrant isn't the leader of their district, House Freth/Claddath are, etc.

I think there's better story-telling we can tell, than pretending we have little fiefdoms. I would even go so far as to say I don't think PCs should be acting as the primary military force. We have an NPC population for that and the constant need for PCs to feel as if they are in control and have ownership over settlements is problematic and hasn't been going well over the years. It leads to massively inflated egos. Enforce some laws in your territory, but to act as if that handful of adventurers is the only line of defense and they must fight all that settlements battles for it, leads to never-ending PvP cycles and people excusing that PvP as necessary. It contributes heavily, in my opinion, to the lowest quality form of conflict, which is just ... PvP egoism. Who has the strongest fighting force is always being openly bragged about on a message board somewhere. The strongest fighting force? Really? This group of adventurers is stronger than, let's say, all of Cordor's real military?

It just seems a very narcissistic and overly abused system that maybe is overdue for adjustment or removal.
There's already a very obvious trend of many characters just not being interested in RPing with anyone who isn't an official, and working as a type of 'secret official' has made that very obvious to me, where people will just refuse to interact with nearly anyone until "The Important One" gets here, and then the real RP can start.

The whole system, in my eyes, just incentivises OOC (discord) co-operation.
That is not to say everyone is cheating through metagaming, but it does reward those who do, and that specific kind of metagaming is near impossible to police for DMs because it can easily be done through private channels and have the necessary RP sprinkled in in-module to legitimise anything that was ordained.

It isn't the good old days anymore. How often is it that a settlement leader is the leader without being involved in any discord channels at all? When was the last time 'the greatest fighting force' didn't have a discord channel? I'm not saying it's everyone all the time, but it's certainly most of them most of the time.

Way too much OOC communication goes on to cement peoples claims to power, before it is excused by RP to justify their already predesigned political ideas, and anyone who doesn't partake in this is at a massive disadvantage, and there's really no way to police it. There's no reliable way to ensure people are RPing organically and not forming bonds of unshakable OOC loyalty between their characters, when we give them a system that relies untirely on # of votes. The absolute best and easiest way to game that system, is to co-ordinate OOCly to get more votes. If you're someone with a lot of OOC friends on the server, you're going to have a huge advantage over someone who keeps their identity anonymous on their characters and does not partake in OOC communications.

This is all because only us, the adventurer PC bourgeoisie, decide for the NPC proletariat, who the "leader", "law enforcement" and "military" will be.

In now well over over a decade and a half of being here, I've never seen a narriative arc take place within those systems that couldn't have also taken place outside of them.

There's nothing stopping people from forming a faction and being a very powerful leader of a faction and having people to boss around, and using those people to boss outsides around with, but to enshrine it with the false-legitimacy of perceived "democracy" or being the only ones who have power in a place, just seems dishonest to the setting, to me.

[Curve]

I generally agree with you and think this would be a positive, if drastic, direction for the server.

[Paint]

While I generally agree that it's silly for Guldorand and Cordor to still be under the settlement system, I think I have the exact opposite response to petty players being petty with power. I think it makes elections meaningful when there's consequences to characters winning, and I don't think that you can really have that meaningfulness without those consequences.

Guldorand and Cordor have been intervened in consistently by the DM staff whenever a leader of either settlement veers too far away from the narrative direction the DMs want there, cutting back what things can and can't be changed, and making these settlements less and less flexible for those who have power there. The net result is that less people are griefed just for existing, and I really find it hard to complain about that. It's good when people don't feel pressure just because they picked x class in one of the larger settlements.

But it does... I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it makes the elections there mean so much less? I don't care who wins the elections in Cordor or Guldorand because it doesn't matter. Whoever wins is going to run the settlement the way the DMs want it to be run with some... subtle shade of grey one way or the other. It doesn't really matter who wins. Everything novel the people running the settlement manage to do will be intrigue RP that can be handled without the settlement system entirely.

So there's the crux. You either give people power and they have more narrative control over settlements you'd prefer them not to change the face of, or you take power away in smaller and smaller amounts until every chancellorship or high... sheriffdom looks exactly the same as the last, and nobody cares except for the roleplayers in the circle of the person who wins. Then, it just becomes taking advantage of the mechanical system in place to decide who gets a piece of the pie for however long it takes for the next administration to come along. In the interim, nothing interesting happens, nothing of consequence changes, and I'm certainly not excited to vote for x over y unless x happens to be one of my character's friends.

This lack of engagement starts creating a great system of kiss the ring roleplay -- you vote in settlements to show your support for some circle of roleplayers. Nobody has some great injustice to rally against, because DMs refuse to allow those great injustices to happen. No administration can veer too far into the, 'don't do that,' territory, because doing that would grief other players.

So settlement elections in Guldorand and Cordor suck. Because the results don't matter. I'm waiting for this to spread to the other settlements, because obviously, based on this last election scandal there's player pressure to keep things the same, too.

Which really only leads me to one question:
If player agency isn't the point of the settlement system, what is?