Voting, Citizenship, and how it could be better.

[The GrumpyCat]

Off the top of my head and without getting into forum callouts, this happened at least four times last year. None of those instances were even attempted to be kept secret, indicating that OOC organizing seems to be a commonly accepted and used practice.

Please report.

We'll look into it and work out if there's been any wrong doing.

[Lady Astray]

So how much gold did I win?

[The GrumpyCat]

To my recollection we have had ... two... maybe three times in the last year reguarding accusations of actual ooc abuse of mechanics reguarding settlment elections (e.g. people rolling up characters just to vote, characters coming back randomly to vote, ect.)

I believe that in only one of those situations was such substantiated to such an extent where is actually made any effect on the election.

We do tend to keep an eye on elections in general, but obviously if things aren't reported - things don't change.

So as of right now, it looks like you're -loosing- money, Astray.

[WinkinBlinkin]

Not the easiest thing to prove though, is it? And a lot of work to investigate. If a mechanical method were available it would have multiple advantages. Not only would it save DM time investigating, it would quash not just ooc election rigging, but the suspicion of ooc election rigging. One of the most destructive parts of this game is the mistrust we have of our fellow players. Anything that lessens this by completely impartial and preferably automated implementations of rules is great. t would be much better if people knew that vote rigging wasn't just not proven, but actually impossible.

[Lady Astray]

Actually I never said I think it happens often or how often I think it happens, just that I don't like the idea of it happening. And I'm not just talking about elections, but what happens afterward when a settlement leader starts doing "favors" for their supporters at the expense of other players and their characters. I for one would like autonomy over any shop or quarter I purchase, someone shouldn't be able to take it away from me just because I hurt their feelings in discord or because I didn't vote for them. That's why I say I think settlement leaders have too much power as it is.

[The GrumpyCat]

Not the easiest thing to prove though, is it? And a lot of work to investigate. If a mechanical method were available it would have multiple advantages. Not only would it save DM time investigating, it would quash not just ooc election rigging, but the suspicion of ooc election rigging. One of the most destructive parts of this game is the mistrust we have of our fellow players. Anything that lessens this by completely impartial and preferably automated implementations of rules is great. t would be much better if people knew that vote rigging wasn't just not proven, but actually impossible.

To stress - This isn't a rebuttle against all of Red ropes ideas. I actually kind of like them personally (with the exception of the third point, and even that I think is workable with some limits on it) Merely that the belief that there is massive, egregious examples of election rigging is (probably) untrue.

Actually I never said I think it happens often or how often I think it happens, just that I don't like the idea of it happening. And I'm not just talking about elections, but what happens afterward when a settlement leader starts doing "favors" for their supporters at the expense of other players and their characters. I for one would like autonomy over any shop or quarter I purchase, someone shouldn't be able to take it away from me just because I hurt their feelings in discord or because I didn't vote for them. That's why I say I think settlement leaders have too much power as it is.

Without laying in one way or another, on this - The balence your talking about is this:

Too Much Power
"Now I'm councellor, I'm going to remove that house from you because I dont' like your face!"

Too Little Power:
"I'm blodgard the Baby Elf Killer and I like to sell necklaces made out of elf ears out of my shop along with Drow Swords. What? You don't like that? Tough! It's my shop and I'll do what I wanna!"

And that's the balence.

At the end of the day, if you'd rather the latter than the former, then that's fine. But you should be prepared to definatly /be/ ok with the Latter, when it occurs, if you want to avoid the former.

[Lady Astray]

If it were up to me things like shop removal or house eviction would have to go straight through the DM's with very good reasoning. But considering settlement leaders have the ability to exile characters, anyone selling "How to Animate the Dead for Dummies" would probably lose their shop anyways after being kicked out of town and unable to refresh their shop for a while. I know of a couple of characters who actually get away with selling banned trade items because the settlement leader is partial toward them. So right now a settlement leader can kick Ugly Bob out of his house and then give it to Blodgard the Baby Elf Killer because they voted for them. I think just having the ability to exile a character should be enough and that exiling someone for OOC or extremely contrived/petty reasons should be punished accordingly. Just the fact that the number of people you can exile is limited would discourage people from using it for the wrong reasons.

[clanogrady]

We are deviating from the issue of Voting/Citizenship at hand I think which is an entirely different set of discussion.

Lady Astray is referencing how, after a settlement take over the new power immediately goes about wiping out the other RP groups in said settlement.

For example: A new group is put into place of a settlement, laws get put into place stating that each group can only have one shop. Yet, every single person in the Government now owns their own individual shops despite the fact that they all help to stock it.

If you report said government official to the proper authority in the Settlement it gets ignored yet other groups will lose their shops.

Or, said people campaign to get into office claiming to fight Underdarkers and Evil. When winning though, they Exile everyone they don't like and openly hire Animators, infernalists, and Underdarker agents as part of their government going directly against what it is they said they were going to do. It doesn't even touch the appearance of violating their character's Concept. (I.E. Radiant heart members working with and supporting said Animators, infernalists and Underdarker agents in their government.)

The whole thing that bothers me is that, the supposed changes proposed wouldn't affect anything at all because of the fact that You can't vote multiple times at the same settlement *To my knowledge, I could be wrong* And even if you could, the DM's do keep track of Voting. All in all, its a lot of work to ultimately do nothing than what is already being done.

[WinkinBlinkin]

I don't think it sounds like an awful lot of work.

When voting, if valid, log:
CD key, character name, date
If CD key already has an entry, replace.

When voting check CD Key:
Is there an entry? If no - valid vote
Is the entry for the same character? If yes - valid vote
Is the entry date more than [set time ago] If yes - valid vote

If not a valid vote, have herald say "I'm sorry, there appears to be a problem with your paperwork."

-----

I've never coded anything for NWN, I don't know how hard it is to look up cd keys, or how information is stored, so I don't know how hard that is to do, but it doesn't sound a lot more painful than trawling through all the logs of all the characters who voted in the elections to see if they had a valid reason to be interested in it. And you would only have to do it once.

[Lady Astray]

What clanogrady said pretty much sums up my experience. My feedback would be to take all these OOC DM tools like policing shops out of the hands of settlement leaders and put them back into the hands of DM's to enforce a higher standard of role play.

I'm all for trade laws like not selling bones and evil tomes, but I've seen firsthand characters who violate these trade laws are rewarded while players like me whose characters actually follow the trade laws and create role play with their business are punished.

Our only option as citizens when a new leader decides they don't like you or your character is to essentially bend over a barrel and take it and then vote against them next election. Even if enough people do vote against them and they get ousted from power, there's pretty much no guarantee you're ever going to get a shop or quarter again in that settlement. I know one player who spent a year looking for a shop. Not an IG year, a RL one. So yeah, plenty of citizens get shafted hard come election time. It has essentially become a mechanic to steal property from other players and their characters.

[CosmicOrderV]

I would like to offer some encouragement. If you don't like how people are roleplaying their character, or if the events that transpire in game don't go your way, it's easy to get frustrated. Sometimes, we become so engrossed in a character, that we feel their frustrations second-hand. But it's important to remember this is a game. It's a story driven game. As Tolkien once wrote,

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass."

If your concerns with the mechanics are over what you might lose, and not about making a good story, then maybe step back, stop posting, and a take a breather. Ask yourself if this is what's best overall, or just what you want for your character.

Cheers.

[Lady Astray]

I did manage to turn it into a decent story arc for my character with long lasting consequences, but that's all on me and the people I actually role played with. The person using my character's old shop to sell DC 15 gem pouches for ten thousand gold or the person who took my character's shop away and handed it to them didn't really contribute to that. And knowing what can happen now I'm heavily discouraged from investing in any shop or quarter that is tied to a settlement.

[magistrasa]

The fact that multiple quarters can be owned by the same character, or different characters on the same key, despite the fact that it's a big rulebreak, makes me think it's actually kinda difficult to code things according to CD keys. Because if it could be done, I'd imagine it would have been done for quarter management already. But that's just an assumption.

In general, I think settlement leaders having more oversight capabilities is a good thing. Elections are one of what feels like few ways to actually drive change (and conflict!) in an area, and the only way for that to happen is if the result of the election is something worth fighting for. If settlement leaders don't have any power, who cares about who becomes that leader? Elected officials being able to keep tabs on things as basic as, "Who is even a citizen here?" seems like a no-brainer to me. I think it might be interesting to see settlement leaders actually set the price for becoming a citizen in the first place, but I can easily see that leading to some silliness.

[WinkinBlinkin]

The twinking mechanics is based on knowing whether something has been owned by a different character on the same cd key, though. I have no clue how easy it would be to implement a voting restriction to be honest, and I hope I didn't come across as saying "This is really easy, come on, get on with it, chop chop!" I was thinking just as much about how time consuming the checks people are doing now must be.

[Marsi]

If it were up to me things like shop removal or house eviction would have to go straight through the DM's with very good reasoning. But considering settlement leaders have the ability to exile characters, anyone selling "How to Animate the Dead for Dummies" would probably lose their shop anyways after being kicked out of town and unable to refresh their shop for a while. I know of a couple of characters who actually get away with selling banned trade items because the settlement leader is partial toward them. So right now a settlement leader can kick Ugly Bob out of his house and then give it to Blodgard the Baby Elf Killer because they voted for them. I think just having the ability to exile a character should be enough and that exiling someone for OOC or extremely contrived/petty reasons should be punished accordingly. Just the fact that the number of people you can exile is limited would discourage people from using it for the wrong reasons.

So, working as intended?

[Xerah]

There is clearly some IC/OOC seperation issues with a few of the posters here. I’ve said this multiple times but you’re inventing OOC issues from likely reason IC approaches.

Also, “band trade items” are a player created device. It’s absurd to suggest DM intervention for someone breaking these “laws”.

[Durvayas]

Our only option as citizens when a new leader decides they don't like you or your character is to essentially bend over a barrel and take it and then vote against them next election.

Or, you know, if it bothers your character enough, you could use this novel mechanic that was put in place called the assassin's guild. You don't need OOC help to solve this very IC problem.

If your character isn't willing to kill over it, I suppose they don't feel strongly enough about the injustice to take matters into their own hands, and they deserve what they get. Make RP of it.

The worst element of arelith's surface side of the community is everyone wants things their own way, and then if faced with adversity they either move away from the settlement to somewhere else, or they rely on DMs to fix whatever dared upset their status quo. You people need to learn to deal with adversity without running or quitting. Such challenges are an RP hook. Work around it. Plot. Change your PC's alignment as they take matters into their own hands. Change faith. Do SOMETHING besides whining and switching settlements.

[n00bdragon]

It's probably not productive to label entire groups as believing this thing or that thing. What Lady Astray is pointing out is clearly an issue that's important to them and probably many people, but I think there is a misunderstanding about how Arelith's political systems are supposed to work. Governments are allowed to be corrupt, unjust, unfair, capricious, or outright evil regardless of where they exist on the island, surface or UD. When governments in those places act that way there are many IG remedies that are available, the most direct of which is to simply hold another election and win it. If you are feeling like you are being treated unfairly and being excluded from various settlement roleplay... that's okay as far as the game is concerned. That's a story being told with your character. If you wish to oppose it you can try gaining allies to support you, you can try supporting an ally of your own, you can move somewhere else, you can hire an assassin. The list goes on and on.

DM enforcement and mechanical restrictions of the citizenship system only exist to make sure IC results come from IC actions. Unfortunately, the question of "how active a character must be to reasonably vote" isn't an easy one to answer and there is a grey area that stretches from horizon to horizon that ultimately you have to give people the benefit of the doubt in. Personally, I don't think there'd be any harm in making the results of elections public. Perhaps this could even be a power delegated to settlement leaders: the ability to publish election results from the most recent election, to see (and show) which character names voted and maybe even how they did so. Would it lead to corruption and retribution? Probably. Would some choose to not show results (either to hide their own questionable acts or simply out of high moral standards)? Probably. But that could encourage more stories to be told and problems solved IC with character outrage instead of on the forums with player outrage.

[Lady Astray]

Not everyone wants to play an evil aligned character. Kinslaying is against Astray's religion. Besides, it would just cause more problems for her later, and really wouldn't solve anything. Violence isn't always the answer. The problem I have is that settlement leaders essentially own every single shop and quarter within that settlement, there's no sort of disclaimer letting you know they can take them from you at any time, and no sort of standard it seems when it comes to what quantifies justifiable role play reasons for taking a shop or quarter. Instead of using leadership mechanics to enforce the actual written laws that characters have the option of following it seems like it is common practice for people to displace other groups and characters just to reward their own followers.

Characters have no real autonomy or option to fight back against that other than doing what you said by hiring an assassin and turning evil, which in most cases probably still won't solve the problem since their character will just come back to life and have a puppet ruler installed in their place. You actually do more harm by running away and whining IC so everyone knows not to vote for them next election, ironically enough. Assassination might remove them from leadership and start an election, but if their reputation is still in tact and they've got a bunch of followers waiting to take their place it's not really going to do much. You have to also tackle the political angle and make sure whoever gets elected next is on your side, and they likely won't be if you're going around murdering folks, at least not on the surface.

[clanogrady]

Our only option as citizens when a new leader decides they don't like you or your character is to essentially bend over a barrel and take it and then vote against them next election.

Or, you know, if it bothers your character enough, you could use this novel mechanic that was put in place called the assassin's guild. You don't need OOC help to solve this very IC problem.

If your character isn't willing to kill over it, I suppose they don't feel strongly enough about the injustice to take matters into their own hands, and they deserve what they get. Make RP of it.

The worst element of arelith's surface side of the community is everyone wants things their own way, and then if faced with adversity they either move away from the settlement to somewhere else, or they rely on DMs to fix whatever dared upset their status quo. You people need to learn to deal with adversity without running or quitting. Such challenges are an RP hook. Work around it. Plot. Change your PC's alignment as they take matters into their own hands. Change faith. Do SOMETHING besides whining and switching settlements.

Tried that already with the assassin guild, was told I am bullying people and abusing the system.

Also, moving away is quite literally the only thing to do. From the Wiki *If a leader gets too ban-happy they'll reduce the population of their settlement and weaken it to the point where it's less fun to play, particularly in the more remote locations. If nobody visits, it's going to get boring - and new leadership will likely come to pass as the old leader gets bored.*

It quite literally says, go away until the jerkwads leave.

Now the issue with Corrupt governments is when you see the exact same behavior of being outright corrupt and evil for several elections in a row regardless of who wins. And when the same corrupt people from previous administrations are still part of new Governments, it goes to show just how little change there actually is.

[Durvayas]

So what you are saying is you have a problem with corruption and cronyism, problems as old as government itself. Politics is a dirty business, and if you are going to get involved, your hands are going to get dirty by nescessity.

Your character is good? Thats nice. To solve your problem, they need to slip to neutral and make some friends in low places because if she isn't willing to get her hands dirty, she needs to enlist the help of those who are. Politics is a battle between appearances and reality. If your PC's opponent is so corrupt that their cronyism is so blatant it should be easy to smear their reputation and preserve your own for an upcoming election. If they are being blatantly nefarious and yet their reputation is spotless you are being politically outmaneuvered to a degree that I can't put into words without being disrespectful. Nonviolent protest does not work in forgotten realms. Ghandi would have never freed india in these conditions. Learn something about changing government from the french revolution and rouse the people.

If you want to #draintheswamp you need to do more than just #resist.


And celanogrady, the wiki is player written and not staff written. If a player wrote to just go away until the problem fixes itself, thats just indicative of the culture problem I mentioned about how people who main surface deal with adversity. The issue is enshrined in arelith's player culture on the surface side. Those who main the UD have nowhere to go, and long ago learned to RP with their adversaries rather than avoid them. We have one town and make it work. You can too.

[DM Sollers]

This is a thread for feedback on an existing system, not bringing IC matters into OOC forum. Cool the heels, stop quoting IC stuff and return to the actual topic.

If we can't do that, this is done and will be locked.

[Lady Astray]

Few ideas mentioned earlier that are still worth discussing imo:

1. Limit the number of citizenships a person can have to one per player, or one per CD key if that's easier to code/enforce.

2. Don't allow people to register as citizens once an election has started. This will stop the 80+ new people from arriving on election day.

A couple more ideas I just had:

3. Make it so an election can be called for at any time. It's dumb someone can run as a lawful/good compassionate character then do a complete 180 alignment-wise once they are installed and we have to wait a full IG year before we can do anything but assassinate them. If leaders could be challenged at any time they might actually use the position wisely.

4. If a settlement leader is acting corrupt or evil and that's their best excuse for doing mean things, they're breaking the law in character, hanging out with necromancers, etc. we shouldn't have our alignment changed to evil for assassinating them because THEY are the ones being evil. You want conflict and drama? Fine. But give us a way to push back without being forever branded as a villain. It's not even much of a conflict if we have no real viable option to retaliate. It's just one side stepping on the other.

That's my feedback.

[Durvayas]

1 and 2 have merit.

3 would be obscenely abusable. We've already seen what happens when elections cycle continuously in the past(the sharps had a near continuous cycle of called elections and bankrupcy from the paralysed practice until they got put on the tyrant system two years ago) It causes real fatigue and disenchantment with the system, and it would eliminated any and all stability in politics on the server.

4. Doing evil things for the sake of good puts you more or less in the chaotic neutral camp. Do it often enough and its evil. Alignment is keyed off of action, not intent in FR; Someone who occasionally hires a murderer to take out a tyrant but otherwise balances out this evil act by committing lots of good can stay on the tightrope of neutral.

[Aftond]

One vote per player sounds like a good idea, prevents shadow voting to a large degree. That's about all which is needed.