Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

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DM Chiliad
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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by DM Chiliad » Sat Jul 28, 2018 4:59 pm

Hello.

To reiterate GrumpyCat's post, the Devil's Table is not the 'drow district' as enforced by the Team. Arelith is largely a dynamic Persistent World. We have given you, the players, the tools and the reasources, how you shape it is completely to your discretion (barring choices that are toxic or unhealthy for the server.) Thus far during my monitoring of the Underdark Politics, and this thread, the only unhealthy things going on are the attitudes levied at each other.

That's going to stop. You, the community, are what make this server excellent through the narratives you tell through your characters with one another. Change is good; no one likes to read the same book over and over, and times are most certainly a-changing. To the respects of the OP, we all have a duty as players to one another to be graceful winners (and losers.) Be mindful of each other, respectful of the roleplay, and be willing to be flexible to help out your fellow player. While the situation as it stands isn't ideal, we'd ask you make the most of it for the time being.

But also don't spit on the hand that is extended to you because what you wanted didn't come out your way.

This is your only warning to correct attitudes to those of you who have been less than cordial and thin in your insults. I will lock this thread if this behavior continues.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by Huschpfusch » Sat Jul 28, 2018 5:13 pm

Are you implying there will be big mechanical changes made to Andunor city?
No. This statement is a commentary on how we have move passed traditional Udos style, attack on sight Drow RP to a more open minded and fluid dynamic between surfacer races and underdark ones.

Whoops, I hit the edit button, not the reply button. My bad.

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flower
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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by flower » Sat Jul 28, 2018 5:31 pm

LichBait wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 10:52 am
The council system is extremely cumbersome, especially if two out of three councilors are not active. To be frankly honest, the only time it worked for my drow PC was when she hilariously wrote a position for herself and cornered another councilor, and gave herself all settlement powers which in effect was a unitary system. You know something is a little broken when your settlement employees can be more empowered than one of its leaders.

The fact of the matter is while Menzoberranzan and some other drow cities 'work' with a council system Andunor is not a drow city. The drow population barely sustains a pair of Houses that boast any kind of numbers. To be entirely frank, even though one of the prime examples of drow culture Menzoberranzan which is about as non-mixed as an underdark city can get in racial popluation, the first house rules everything with an iron first. The council is largely just so the first house can tell the seven other more powerful houses what's what. Also a single drow ruling body not being a thing is just blatantly wrong. Drow cities vary vastly from region to reigon. Maerimydra is a city that has a single ruling House in House Chûmavh.

To sum up, a single ruler system would be more effective and less time consuming for those involved.

Yet the drow are the majority of PCs played around if we take into account all levels in UD and yet have the lowest presentation within the city in features. Beside few things in temple (Devils D.) there are very little to zero features of city reserved for the most numerous race down there.

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flower
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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by flower » Sat Jul 28, 2018 5:42 pm

dominantdrowess wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 12:59 pm


I.e. ganking level 3 outcast chars while they do their delivery quest. And such entities continue to insert themselves into Andunors politics and seek legitimacy through a minor seat on the council for the views a super majority do not hold.

The point of a democracy is some sort of influence on standards of civility by the majority. This will enable us to do this.
And i have witnessed humans bullying level 3 drow and was even taking unwilling participating in that once with my own drow. And that laughable IG argument, that if i dont obey i die and will be punished by Lloth for being weak...lol.


Lets not play the game only drow players do this crap. It comes from both sides. Andunor is one huge city, yet one group currently controls it, leaving no flexibility, pvping opposition into oblivion. And despite my character took no stance in politic or even did not join any faction, she had been bullied by sharpian guy just because was a drow. Nothing is black and white.


Andunor is full of people who hate each other and will never miss a chance to do some mischief on the other one and removing three seat council will not fix that.

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dominantdrowess
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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by dominantdrowess » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:00 pm

Andunor isn’t full of people who hate eachother; it is full of a lot of people who want to work together toward common goals. The main problems as I see it is a damaging system that lends a faux legitimacy that cannot be measured to individuals who continuously use it for that purpose inspite of it having no functional power.

The third seat as red ropes put it just gets knocked over.

The rest of the problem is that everyone else is exausted of the extra work of the charade and is lifting the curtain continuously to show this problem IC and OOC.

And it is a non-combatable (pvp) super majority of the playerbase that is pointing at it.

Likewise in response to Chilliads post; there is a lot of OOC communication going on, that is largely the problem I am pointing out. And none of these things are defenses of the ridiculous amount of labor required to utilize the council system nor the way it will continue burning through leaders unless people with too much time and too much energy simply take control of it— which is the problem.

It basically comes off to a lot of us as a gimmick to keep players at eachothers throats in a way where we did the math that it wouldn’t if it was single party. Likewise? Many of the people who defend the system lament the amount of PvP used to take charge of and control it. To pin fown the wild hose — which I think only adds to the points I have made elsewhere in the post, not detracts from it.
Last edited by dominantdrowess on Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

WinkinBlinkin
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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:11 pm

I played one of the three councillors in about 4 successive councils and found it extremely drow like and, for the most part, enjoyable.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by dominantdrowess » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:12 pm

WinkinBlinkin wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:11 pm
I played one of the three councillors in about 4 successive councils and found it extremely drow like and, for the most part, enjoyable.
But according to the DMs in this thread it isn’t supposed to be a drow district.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:13 pm

I also never, ever, engaged in out of game communication with either of the other councillors, who were generally thought to be quite awkward to deal with. I thought it was very thematic.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by dominantdrowess » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:14 pm

WinkinBlinkin wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:13 pm
I also never, ever, engaged in out of game communication with either of the other councillors, who were generally thought to be quite awkward to deal with. I thought it was very thematic.
Thematic of the drow district that it has been stated in the thread by the staff it isn’t supposed to be?

This is innately a problem.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by Vodka Musician » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:17 pm

Some players attempted to make it drow-like and drow 'only' without lasting success. There are plenty of non-drow in the DT. Also, concur that the councilor system is pretty terrible and the high-turnover of councils is quite ridiculous. The other settlements systems work far better than this antiquated remnant.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:17 pm

My apologies if this double posts, as my last posts seem not to have come up.

I used drow politics, as we were all drow. I think the term is totally interchangeable for any evil backstabbing political play.

I find single seat powers always get taken over by the same ooc groups, never allowing anyone new to get a foothold. Alternatively, I find the 3 seat system in the Devil's Table favours organically grown smaller groups, forcing them o coordinate.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:24 pm

You know, I survived about six months of holding it together with Eleon and Elise.

If I can do that, really, there is no reason for anyone to complain its unworkable.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by Xerah » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:27 pm

It is somewhat thematic, but it is not really conducive to actually doing cool stuff.

The Table is a similar size to Cordor, population wise and non-clique people (as was described) get elected all the time.
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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:36 pm

The Table is far more intimate than Cordor, and everyone knows everyone else. I also get the impression that there a lot more UD established cliques. And when I say, get the impression, I mean, I see groups of the same 15 or so people descend en masse with different characters every 6 months.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:38 pm

Though, I do think it would make sense, since the theme for the Table is Law, and for the Sharps, Chaos, to exchange the systems between the two places. I think this would be rather hard to explain ICly though.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:44 pm

I always see this idea of a single ruler of the Table brought up on Discord, and always by followers of the Xal'rae/Ezrak/Mel'Nozz crew. I do not really think they need a greater monopoly of anything.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by dominantdrowess » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:50 pm

Can you condense your posts into a single edit rather than spamming? So it isn’t repeated posts by the same person in succession.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by Huschpfusch » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:54 pm

Hey, just a sudden idea: between the one-seat and 3-seat system there could be an actual compromise version:
One-seat system where the winner of the election has to take Nr. 2 and Nr. 3 from election on for job in their government.
This would feel closer to the first-house-leading-culture than the 3-equal-seat-councilor-thing.
Maybe would be interesting for other settlements as well, since I guess a lot of tension between players is due to the fact that it is all-or-nothing elections. So maybe a system where Nr. 2 and 3 also get a tiny portion of the powerpudding would reduce the level of verbal dung flying between ppl/factions and increase the lifespan of governments-elected.
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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:56 pm

You would need actual preset jobs with actual real powers that you can't remove, but actually, I think that's an awesome idea.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:57 pm

Can I throw in a few more actuals? I've had a very hard couple of days, guys, and I am sorry for being blunt and poorly expressed.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by dominantdrowess » Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:58 pm

See that is an idea the thing I am saying is that the current system is generally untennable enouh that it was removed from all other settlements. I am not saying it requires any specific fix I have named — just that it certainly needs changes.

Because as it is I think it leads to a place nobody on any side of it will be happy with.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 7:02 pm

And DD, I've always been under the impression that editing one's posts is far worse forum netiquette than spam posting. Because if you edit your posts, you can be unfairly editing the conversation in your own favour.

In future, after this spam post, I will endeavour to wait until someone else has posted their thoughts before I update mine, so as not to offend anyone's delicate forum sensitivies. :P

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 7:02 pm

YES! You got in first.

Oh, crap. I just ruined it.

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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by Xerah » Sat Jul 28, 2018 7:14 pm

WinkinBlinkin wrote:
Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:44 pm
I always see this idea of a single ruler of the Table brought up on Discord, and always by followers of the Xal'rae/Ezrak/Mel'Nozz crew.
I mean, I'm not part of any of those "crews", most likely, eventually against them, and yet I still support the idea of a solo ruler.
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Re: Devil's Table Councilor/Writ System

Post by WinkinBlinkin » Sat Jul 28, 2018 7:16 pm

But you did just go onto Discord, and ask people you knew there, who are often from those crews, to come and read this post.

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