Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

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Peppermint
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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Peppermint » Wed Mar 04, 2015 11:50 am

The Rambling Midget wrote:Nefarious Councilor: Gerald, this writ says that you need to give me all of the money in all of Cordor, because I need it. For things.

Cordorian Elite Guard: *yawns*

Other Cordorian Elite Guard: *scans the street (which was recently installed in the meeting hall)*

Gerald: Does it have the necessary signatures?

Nefarious Councilor: Yes. It has my signature, as well as this other signature from some councilor three years ago.

Gerald: ... 'Kay. Looks pretty legit.
Fixed that for you.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Plonkers » Wed Mar 04, 2015 12:16 pm

the thing that gets me on this is that whenever people steal from the treasury they then stop playing the characters so no one can catch them, they should be online so people can do the chase.

I don't really care that the treasury got stolen, its not like it was getting used for anything but to look at anyways. We can all agree that it has been done before and is less and less interesting to hear about and i hear that many players lose interest in the characters that steals from the treasury, so many times its the last resort to get the treasury before you stop playing the character.

to me its just something lame to do and i would stay the heck away from doing it, but who cares right.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Norfildor » Wed Mar 04, 2015 1:43 pm

Now, here is an interesting read: http://wiki.arelith.com/Ruling_example. I took the liberty of quoting the following part:
Jjjerm (2012, p. 1) wrote:Evil councilor (Interactive role play)

written by Jjjerm

Allrighty, so I wanted to put this out there as an educational read, for any who are interested.

Recently, an elected councilor (we shall call him X) evicted a player (whom we shall call Y) from her home, and passed it to an associate and co conspirator.

Here is my view of that: Brilliant! With a bit of interactive RP, this could have turned out to be the RP of the year.... Evil Councilman X attempts to evict prominent resident Y, rally around and take a side, etc. It would have been some great "evil" interaction, and not at all outside of what you'd expect from a corrupt government (that you voted in).


Here's where the disconnect was: instead of doing a bunch of build up and interactive RP, it was basically done when player Y was offline, without any interaction WITH Y. So, just like we'd expect an interactive role play before physically injuring someone in PvP, we expect interactive RP before injuring someone in that way too, it's really a matter of "if you are doing harm to another player in character, there should be some interaction going on"...just to be fair.

The players involved didn't have any malice, and were planning to RP stuff afterwards, but that's where the disconnect was: ACTION FOLLOWS RP, not vice versa. If that makes any sense. Now, the group that X was associated with had RP'ed this quite well in and amongst themselves, but failed to do so with Y, whose house they took.

So, basically I saw it as a violation of rules 1 and 4. 1 because there wasn't interactive role play, and 2 because the position of power was used inappropriately (and without RP about that specific event with Player Y).

I do want to point out that had this been an involved role play over a few weeks of Evil Councilman X kicking a resident from their home, and there was good strong interactive play on it...I would ABSOLUTELY have backed that up. The delineating factor to consider is: Did this create a good interactive RP? In this case, although I have absolute confidence that there was no mean-spiritedness on the part of player X, that crucial element was missing.

So, the councilman in question has been removed from office and is spending his days in the Scorpion Pits for a wile, where Lord Vetinari expects at any time that he will reveal the names of his co-conspirators (whom will all be banished from cordor proper for a week, after he cracks).

The home has been returned to the original owner, and all's well that ends well, generally.

But, take a lesson here, and it will serve you well. The idea was not a bad one at all, just in how it was implemented. A very good way to look at things on the server is not only "will my character gain advantage" (which is how most folks think, if we're honest) but "how can this be turned to promote RP within the server?". Also of note, please keep in mind that I absolutely do NOT believe that these questions are mutually exclusive. But, if you're asking the first ever (and you probably are), don't hesitate to ask the second of yourself as well, eh?

There was some other RP that involved some other characters, which...since it has to date not involved any rules infractions that I've been made aware of, I am making no stance on. So, anyone that was involved and on player Y's faction, don't misunderstand my administering justice as validating your rp to the exclusion of the other faction. I just make sure that in the communities, we observe the niceties that set us apart.

Pleasant gaming, everyone, and pleasant screams.

Jjjerm
Now, when I think about treasury theft, I can see far too many simmilarities with the above example. Virtually the only difference I can see in this instance is that instead of exploiting councillor powers to steal property from one player, these powers are used to commit an act of a rather excessive theft against a larger part of the player base, but all the undesirable factors of this action remain - there's no RP buildup and no prior involvment of the damaged party - on the contrary, in order to be successful, the perpetrators need to go out of their way to ensure that nobody sees this coming.

However, I can see how it can be impractical to expect the councillors to notify every single citisen of [insert Arelith settlement here] in advance and during an interactive roleplay encounter of their intentions to use funds from the city treasury. This is a very large grey area in which, somewhere along the way certain actions can be taken that can result in OOC offense and can even be percieved as rules breach. Then again, this is something that falls down to the DM headache department, but from what I can tell as far as councillor powers and city treasury go, something doesn't work properly and could probably use some form of intervention.

One way or another, it is my strong oppinion that the title of this thread is wrong, because city treasury theft is not a good thing (at least not when done in the way that it's been done so far).
Last edited by Norfildor on Wed Mar 04, 2015 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by livingNPC » Wed Mar 04, 2015 1:52 pm

Imagevia Imgflip Meme Maker

We just didn't make big deal about it and handled it IG.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by The Rambling Midget » Wed Mar 04, 2015 4:54 pm

Norfildor wrote:[Things n' stuff.]
Treasury theft is a weird thing, because at once it has no victims and many. It's hard to do a RP build up because the instant you give the faintest hint that you might rob the treasury, it gets transferred to a trustee until you're booted from office. The fact is that a city like Cordor often has far too much gold for any one person to use, so it's really more about giving the finger to all those people you don't like. (totally IC motivation, you swear)

So, the only way for it to really be interesting is for, say, a particular Councilor to defect to another city - Wharftown, for example - and transfer the entire treasury as well as the entire surplus of resources. And then laugh from a distance and wait for the war/politics to start. (I really want to see that happen. Someone do it plz.) Or it could even be a faction. As long as something engaging follows it.

I don't think it's practical to RP before treasury theft, but I wouldn't bat an eye if someone was smitten for doing nothing with it afterward.
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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by DreamOfCream » Wed Mar 04, 2015 5:14 pm

Using the gold to raise an army is one of coolest ideas I've heard.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Ferret Roll » Wed Mar 04, 2015 5:24 pm

The Rambling Midget wrote:
So, the only way for it to really be interesting is for, say, a particular Councilor to defect to another city - Wharftown, for example - and transfer the entire treasury as well as the entire surplus of resources. And then laugh from a distance and wait for the war/politics to start. (I really want to see that happen. Someone do it plz.) Or it could even be a faction. As long as something engaging follows it.

I don't think it's practical to RP before treasury theft, but I wouldn't bat an eye if someone was smitten for doing nothing with it afterward.
The whole point of Arelith is RP, though. It may be impractical, but is it really an interesting or believable story if Joe Shmoe Councilor can wander in and rob Cordor blind...after it's happened five hundred times or so? There's a certain point where Gerald should be concerned Vetinari'll have him fired/imprisoned/executed for permitting the treasury to be emptied yet again.

The treasury gets moved to a trustee? Make an IC investigation out of it. Send bloody notes to the trustee character once you find them with bits of their buddies stuck to the notes, maybe. Threats, etc demanding the funds. You don't even need to be a councilor to do that. Wear a mask, get lackeys who are promised a cut of the funds to act as your thugs and muscle.

Take hostages, make demands, do something that stirs more interest than walking up to Gerald and handing him a slip of paper to take the whole treasury before scooting out of town and walking around in disguise for the rest of your days.

You do not have to win in a plot to produce roleplay. You can turn a loss into more roleplay for others.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by The Rambling Midget » Wed Mar 04, 2015 5:42 pm

Sure. I agree with that. That's one option. What I'm saying is that I agree that the point of Arelith is RP, and in a case where there isn't a direct victim, I think I'm okay with it happening so long it leads to a proportional creation of RP. (In the case of treasury theft, that means the thief should be making an effort to engage the entire city)

I've never seen the staff make a visible effort to stop it, and since it is technically possible, (which is the best kind, apparently) it falls under WYSIWYG. I'm just hoping for the best end scenario.
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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Yma23 » Wed Mar 04, 2015 6:42 pm

The main concerns I'm seeing here are...

-That it's too easy to steal the entire treasury - not enough build up.
True but a) it's rarely in the advantage of the person to make buldup and b) there can be lots of rp buildup to this, it's just not seen by the entirity of those effected (aka the citizenry). Placing some disadvantage or difficulty to stealing -all- of might be worth while, but I don't know.

-That there's no way to trace who did it in a multi councllorship group.
True. The argument 'so blame them all' is possible, but a) people rarely like to be wrong and b) It can seem a bit mean on the 'innocent' parties to suddeny start lynching them. Not to say it shouldn't be done, but I can see the concerns. Speaking personaly, I would like to see a very specific way of tracing the perpitrator. Maybe a high DC Investigate roll that much be performed a certain time after the bankruptsy has occured? I don't know. But this I can understand.

- Perpetrators can get away scot free with no reprocussions.
Frankly - this is something we cannot fix. The end 'I don't want consequence' to any situation IG is, frankly, just to log off and never log in again. Which, one can argue, is a huge consequece (effective unplayability of the character) But whethe this 'story' will continue shall, and always will, be in the hands of the players.

One thing that does occur to me, and perhaps seems a little coutner intuative, is that maybe we need the settlment system to have more ways that councellors have to -spend- gold to make it work. Thus allowing for more flexible taxes, and meaning that when the treasury gets stolen it's not 'oh well' more a 'hrn, Ok we -really- need to fix this.' Depdendent on how it is implimented, it could also mean giving more people more access to the treasury system which, yes, allows for more likelyhood of stealing but also could be used to balence out more strictues on stealing.
Ideas off the top of my head include
*Putting a certain amount of gold in waterworks could decrease well poisoning capacity
*Putting it in Economics could make prices better for merchants
*Putting it into Guards could raise or lower the chance of being found out for the Exile script
*Putting it into Defences could do something (what?) to the Underdark Monster Autokill script
*Putting it into imports/exports could make new npc's (Like tinkers) appear to sell odd things.

The councellors, or someone of their choosing, have to put a certain amount of gold into these things from the treasuy each three months (that's one ooc week). Working out what to budet for, what they want, ect. Missing a three month period either decreases it significantly, or reduces it to 0 or something. This gives the treasury extra use, means more people have access to the treasury, and also assures that a councllor/mayor has to be around at least once a ooc week, which I think is fair.

Also it means that when the treasury is stolen again, it becomes less of a: *Sigh* It happened -again-?
And more a 'Oh bum-cakes! How are we going to raise the funds to keep up the public works?!' It will encourage people to hunt down the perpetrators, encourage the use of higher taxes, encourage conflict and also, act as a counter point for some sort of measurement to make large scale treasury stealing a little harder in some way or other, or at least tracable.

EDIt: or another interesting idea is to put the settlments in direct competition with each other, like with the underdark district system, where each month they (automaticaly or manually?) bid a certain amount for each section. The winner gets what they want. If no one bids, no one gets anything.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by P Three » Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:19 pm

Plonkers wrote:the thing that gets me on this is that whenever people steal from the treasury they then stop playing the characters so no one can catch them, they should be online so people can do the chase.
THIS is a big part of why I think it's pure cheese. This cuts the ABILITY for us to investigate/solve/etc completely out. It also speaks to me of the motivation behind the act. If you steal it and you hang out and we can't nail you but you're THERE? So that if a co-conspirator cracks, Gerald has a sudden attack of Morality, or the Triad descend from on high to fingerpoint, we can act (or if not you can spend the ill gotten wealth and thumb your nose?) ? Good. Thank you. You're at least providing other players the chance to be involved, to solve the issue, to put your head on a pike, whatever.

I know I only speak for me, but the actual theft doesn't bother me. Rob the city blind if you can, but let it open avenues of RP. Don't leave frustrated characters (and players) with no way to stop/search/prove it.
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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Lord_Phoenyx » Wed Mar 04, 2015 8:34 pm

I've got to say, Yma offers a rather insightful way to make the treasury useful... if it can be implemented in game.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by P Three » Wed Mar 04, 2015 8:43 pm

Gotta second that. Yma is good for that kinda thinking! :)
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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Anime Sword Fighter » Wed Mar 04, 2015 8:50 pm

livingNPC wrote:
We just didn't make big deal about it and handled it IG.
I might be remembering wrong but I think there were a few suggestions made similar to the contemporary about treasury and settlement revisions, but since not as many people have played in the UD as Cordor, not as many people felt qualified or simply had an opinion about it since they didn't know what kind of circumstances led to it.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by P Three » Wed Mar 04, 2015 8:51 pm

Coreybush11 wrote:
livingNPC wrote:
We just didn't make big deal about it and handled it IG.
I might be remembering wrong but I think there were a few suggestions made similar to the contemporary about treasury and settlement revisions, but since not as many people have played in the UD as Cordor, not as many people felt qualified or simply had an opinion about it since they didn't know what kind of circumstances led to it.
And the majority of our complaint is that because of mechanical limitations, we CANNOT handle it IG.
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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Sab1 » Wed Mar 04, 2015 10:14 pm

Its not stealing the treasury is bad, its how easy it is to do it and not get caught. Not to mention the people who steal it then decide to stop playing that character. You want to steal the treasury fine, but at least make it a challenge, after all stealing two million shouldn't be easy.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Wed Mar 04, 2015 11:54 pm

I think a lot of it comes from an actual lack of check and balances. The council is basically authoritarian in a pure mechanical standpoint. Their powers are all restricted through "rp" documents.

You can argue whether that's a good thing or not, but I think this conflict is the root of a lot of the discourse:
a) total mechanical absolutism in mechanics
b) a facade of restraint and constitutionality rooted in a few scraps of parchment

There should either be an in-game acceptance of a), or a more mechanical representation of b).
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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Daedin » Thu Mar 05, 2015 12:37 am

Random post out of nowhere:

Put an end, or at least a partial one, to how gold is safely deposited,transfered and withrawned from the ATMs that are the banks. I know people are very attached to their gold, but when you are moving it in the millions, it should be hard, specialy in a partialy (or marginaly) medieval setting.

A corrupt councilor wants to have 300 million coin transfered from the Cordorian Vaults, to his own personnal account?

An actual, visible, interactable, physical mannifestation of the tens of chests needed for such a move should be in place.

Make Settlement Banks a system of their own. Make it so even a character's gold is stored in only one specific bank on the island. An elf from Myon opens an account there, and can only deposit and withraw money from that one, specific place. Everything else needs to be done manualy. Like the peasants we are. Maybe that'd give a boost to road bandit role play too.



*Sneaks off into the Canadian, frozen night*

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Lord_Phoenyx » Thu Mar 05, 2015 2:39 am

You could take the independent bank situation a little further, too. Want to take your money with you? Get a letter of credit from your bank. Settlements at odds with one another? You can't use your letter at the settlement your settlement is at odds with.

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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by The Man of the Moon » Thu Mar 05, 2015 8:50 am

This
P Three wrote: I know I only speak for me, but the actual theft doesn't bother me. Rob the city blind if you can, but let it open avenues of RP. Don't leave frustrated characters (and players) with no way to stop/search/prove it.
Sab1 wrote:Its not stealing the treasury is bad, its how easy it is to do it and not get caught. Not to mention the people who steal it then decide to stop playing that character. You want to steal the treasury fine, but at least make it a challenge, after all stealing two million shouldn't be easy.
Daedin wrote: An actual, visible, interactable, physical mannifestation of the tens of chests needed for such a move should be in place.

I think that at least, track of what writs were used to remove gold should be made as a must (particulary who used them).

Makes no sense that a settlement had a treasure vault and that one stole as much gold using writs without notice of anyone (unless the thieve was the own treasure keeper).

Track of who removed gold with the writs is a must.

_____________________________________
Peppermint wrote:
The Rambling Midget wrote:Nefarious Councilor: Gerald, this writ says that you need to give me all of the money in all of Cordor, because I need it. For things.

Cordorian Elite Guard: *yawns*

Other Cordorian Elite Guard: *scans the street (which was recently installed in the meeting hall)*

Gerald: Does it have the necessary signatures?

Nefarious Councilor: Yes. It has my signature, as well as this other signature from some councilor three years ago.

Gerald: ... 'Kay. Looks pretty legit.
Fixed that for you.
Also, seems pretty obvious that writs from other councils diferent than the current regent council should expire with the new council election.

Or

Give the new council the option to cancel all the previous writs from past councils?
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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by Stath » Thu Mar 05, 2015 10:51 am

Suggestion: As soon as a Character assumes a political position, all of their levels are replaced with Blackguard and their alignment is immediately shifted to Lawful Evil. Alternatively Rogue for (treasury) pickpocket.
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Re: Why Stealing the Treasury is a Good Thing

Post by The Man of the Moon » Thu Mar 05, 2015 11:46 am

Stath wrote:Suggestion: As soon as a Character assumes a political position, all of their levels are replaced with Blackguard and their alignment is immediately shifted to Lawful Evil. Alternatively Rogue for (treasury) pickpocket.
In certain settlements this is a default mode bro... :lol:
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