Devil's Table Potential Goverment System Brainstorm

[Durvayas]

I have read a lot of great points regarding moving to a single councilor system. However, while the three-councilor system does have issues, it also functions the way it does, and is chaotic due to IC actions of the PCs involved. Meaning - if it is the ROLEPLAY of those involved to keep the system unstable, or to use the system to keep the district in chaos and undergoing election after election - then why would we place a mechanical system in place that negates roleplay?

There is roleplay involved in smashing fixtures and destroying player made camps and shrines, but after a certain point, it easily becomes griefing. We have a mechanical system in place that tracks the destruction of fixtures. After many months of instability, and, as dominantdrowess mentioned, people using councilorship to avoid exile to continue causing trouble for the ruling parties involved within the district, anti-griefing measures should be taken to put a stop to it or, as this thread suggests, the system needs to be made less ripe for abuse and stabalized.

The system does not work right now, because many of the people who would be interested in being involved in table politics recognise the system for how unstable it is and aren't participating. If you simply look at the rate at which factions burn out on the table side of things, at the rate at which leaders burn out, you see where the system is failing. People, good roleplayers, are deciding that the system isn't worth being involved in, which is only further destabalizing it. Thats why bidding isn't going on. Why would wealthy, powerful characters run by good roleplayers bother to get involved in a system that breeds that degree of frustration?

Emphasis mine.

The three councilor system is specifically designed to have a high turnover rate - whether through election, frustrating burnout, or gridlock.

This is mechanically not a system worth investing personal coin in via the leasing hall.

The table is currently designed to be unstable so that it has turnover and infighting(The devs keep saying the table isn't meant to be the drow district, yet this is the only place on the module this system features). Currently, it emulates the nonviability of lolthite culture in lore in a very mechanical sense. In ONLY this regard, it functions well. I'm confident, however, that frustrating players into not bothering, was never the intent.

Skibbles and dominantdrowess bring up a great point about competition between the districts.

The sharps is waging an economic war, directly or indirectly, against the table. Economic warfare "aims to capture or otherwise control the supply of critical economic resources so that the military and intelligence agencies can operate at full efficiency or deprive enemy forces of those resources so that they cannot function properly." The very design of the table's government renders it unable to compete.

The Sharps has a vested interest in seeing the table unstable, because it causes people to join it. Controlling all the territories causes people to join it. Maintaining a status quo wherein the table cannot compete mechanically strengthens the sharps. The sharps having a higher UNIFIED population all working under a single banner economically allows the sharps to easily outproduce the table in gold and resources with its singular government, controlled by a single faction, against the tables three or less smaller factions. This Sharps are, thanks to this system, able to use demoralization to further weaken the table. Demoralization is a process in psychological warfare with the objective to erode morale(induce burnout in this case) among enemy combatants and/or noncombatants. That can encourage them to retreat(not actually an option), surrender(Quit playing their characters or leave the server), or defect(Join the sharps) rather than defeating them in combat.

We see the sharps currently has control in Andunor using 'divide and rule' (gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy. The concept refers to a strategy that breaks up existing power structures, and especially prevents smaller power groups from linking up, causing rivalries and fomenting discord among the people) doctrine, which is nearly effortless thanks to the fact that the council government mechanically encourages exactly that.

There is precedent in RP, in that the drow, when they were a loosely unified bloc against the sharps, used the exact same tactics against the monster races. The key difference then was that both districts were on an even playing field. Both had council governments. Both were designed to be unstable and able to influence the other if any savvy group managed to work their intrigue right. This is no longer the case.

When the sharps was under a triumvirate government, it too was extremely unstable, its economy was ruined(from councilors not bothering to regulate its shops), its membership so incredibly ambivalent to the political system that multiple times councilors won re-election without even running because nobody bothered to sign up. The sharps was given the one-ruler system as a result. Combined with a double population boom from outcasts(new players often roll humans because they don't need to research any lore; this is a statistical fact) and the EE rollout, the sharps is a juggernaut now.

Regardless of what system is put in place later, the system is actively encouraging the burnout of players in the Devil's Table. It needs to be replaced with a one-leader model in the interim. The table hasn't been stable for over five RL months now, and is only getting worse.

Once again, this is a thread for suggestions for new government systems, to fix the table, and possibly the entire settlement government system as a whole across the server. Please, stop with the posts of "Hehe, its fine as it is, don't fix it" because thats not what this thread is for.

[Skibbles]

Durvayas makes an excellent point: comparing the old Sharps versus the new.

It is manifestly relevant and evident that the old Sharps, wrought with strife and account drains and endless voting cycles, would never compete with the new one which has enjoyed several extremely successful single party leadership cycles and unquestionable domination over the sphere of influence in Andunor - repeatedly.

[dominantdrowess]

::With regards to Durvayas' post above::

This is precisely the issue that caused me to take interest in The Devil's Table in the first place. Because Andunor needs to be balanced, and the two systems are not equal ... one side will win.

The two districts MUST be mirrors in mechanics or the "tug-of-war" between them can never function properly.

View the scenario in reverse:

If Vance and Ezra had been required to run The Sharps with a council, and The Devil's Table had a single ruler, and all the surface remained single ruler -- how would The Sharps look, today after Ezra died?

Ultimately: The point is... both systems must be balanced against each other in Andunor.

[reighbo]

The two districts MUST be mirrors in mechanics or the "tug-of-war" between them can never function properly.

View the scenario in reverse:

If Vance and Ezra had been required to run with a council, and The Devil's Table had a single ruler -- how would The Sharps look, today?

... I can answer that, but ... requires another thread. As requested below.

Once again, this is a thread for suggestions for new government systems, to fix the table, and possibly the entire settlement government system as a whole across the server. Please, stop with the posts of "Hehe, its fine as it is, don't fix it" because thats not what this thread is for.

*shrugs*

[Huschpfusch]

1) Switch Devil`s table to single government like every other settlement on Arelith immediately while
2) ...working on a concept to all settlement governments that will guarantee stability to some degree and turnover?

Is that our mission statement here?

[WinkinBlinkin]

I would avoid having elections for individual positions as this would concentrate power in the hands of the most popular faction. This is a bad thing, because certain factions will be the most popular a split second after they form, because of who is in them, rather than because of evolving rp.

[Skibbles]

1) Switch Devil`s table to single government like every other settlement on Arelith immediately while
2) ...working on a concept to all settlement governments that will guarantee stability to some degree and turnover?

Is that our mission statement here?

I would agree with this, certainly.

To be transparent: I've long agitated for single party systems since before the other settlements converted, and I even recall making the recommendation on discord years ago when it was brought up by a developer. That's not to say I authored the entire concept, but it demonstrates where I come from on this.

To me it involves the least mechanical shenanigans, and the most RP before and after election.

If anyone can dream up a better system, I'm all ears, but it is in my opinion the best we've seen so far.

[BegoneThoth]

I would avoid having elections for individual positions as this would concentrate power in the hands of the most popular faction. This is a bad thing

It's an election. The most popular people win.

[LongDongPingPong]

It's an election. The most popular people win.

Or the people in charge who bothered to exile all their opposition to prevent them from winning... Their popularity sometimes only spread on their faction members who are supporting them, and not on the other district citizens.
I think if every candidate stated what are their goals and what they are trying to achieve, and citizens could vote for stripping them out of power if some time passed and said goals were not achieved would be fair.

[TimeAdept]

If an election is won or lost because you were able to exile 5 people to stop them from voting then does it really matter if the remaining 12 are still in charge?

Maybe those 5 exiles should work on convincing people to vote who otherwise might not. The Table aand Sharps last I checked each have nearly 100 citizens. You can exile like ... 7.

[Skibbles]

The Table has 120+ citizens right now, and I think 3 exiles.

To be fair, I think what is often more swinging in an election is threat of violence beyond exile. However that is still usually an extension of greater number of characters and player commitment (in measure of time, I mean).

Beyond exiling a candidate before they have a chance to click the run for office button, I don't think it is the exile mechanic specifically that is an issue with election results as much as roleplayed pressure usually violent in nature, overall numbers, and time spent by active leadership characters pounding the pavement for support.

To stay on topic, from what I've seen, both systems tend to experience this in some equal measure or another and I'm not sure it should be an immediate consideration given that it is a side effect of power grabs both in game and in real life.

[Durvayas]

1) Switch Devil`s table to single government like every other settlement on Arelith immediately while
2) ...working on a concept to all settlement governments that will guarantee stability to some degree and turnover?

Is that our mission statement here?

Pretty much. Its beyond question that a fix is needed. HOW is what is in question in this thread.

For the time being, until that question is answered, the government system should be changed as a stopgap measure to prevent it from getting worse than it already is.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I think it's inherently more rewarding to have a settlement system that lives and dies on the competence of a single leader than swathe in the inevitable mediocrity of power-sharing between three leaders.

I also believe the settlement system is obtuse, unnecessarily, and an impediment. Political organization occurred just fine before it was introduced circa 40 AR.

You cannot create a political system that accurately reflects Faerun while also upholding the Be Nice rule and principles of fair play. So that's how we got to this oligarchic system of settlement roleplay today, and while some settlements have maintained tradition in spite of it (i.e. Brogendenstein), Cordor remains the landmark of the surface/Arelith and is bogged down by the inflexible mechanics.

[ProbablyAMage]

A council system CAN work.....if the stars align, and every member of often wildly divergent factions headed by extremely prideful people all work together, happen to have the same playtimes, and are between them able to hammer out decisions which can be acted on decisively. If you manage all of that, you have precisely one election cycle of competing on almost even footing with a single seat system. Economic wars are waged over long term. The one and only way for the Devil's Table to compete in the current system over that long term is to establish precisely what the DM team has stated they do not want. An overly stable rule by a group or groups who have agreed to work together to maintain their power base long term. Failing that statistical unlikelihood happening, the best we can hope for is establishing a single councilor with supreme power through writs....and if we're doing that, why in the world can't we just have a real system for it?

[Karris the Anarchist]

Please, please, please, just change it to be the same system as every single other settlement on the server. Why is this particular district arbitrarily chosen to represent a system that most underdarkers would reject in a heartbeat, given the choice?

I cannot for the life of me count how many times over the years there has been a lot of stuff going on to set up some faction in power, and then one random night, you log in and everything is upside down because of some technicality. Personally, I've given up on settlement stuff in the DT completely due to the overwhelming hassle of being unable to ever be anything other than a democratic figurehead resting on nothing but OOC goodwill that can have all their work undone within a few minutes, despite being the supposedly de-facto leader of a controlling faction.

Not to mention the very unfortunate consequence of directly causing major burning rate among players who tried to give it a shot.

[Capt.shadow]

Glad this has stayed on topic as i wish to throw in my own thoughts, First Durvayas is acutaly quit right there all vaild points, but i say there only skimming the surface as the whole city has it own collection of deep complex social problems but honestly reason i have never care to publicly say anything on the matter is that its all stemms from the community role play and history, yes some are correct when they say that OOC plays a good hand in stuff but i cant answer anything on that, what i can say is that the city is a product of lot of investment from whole groups of people acting, reacting and counter acting in a big giant politicial game, mean if you look at the city history its filled with crazy player choices which are felt long after the effects of that player/group have gone, while not every player knows whats happing on the otherside of the city, there is lot going on with the players, just..lot of folks hide that fact or play time are diffrent,s there is host of reasons why, IG dislike also being a thing.

now with that siad! Could we make a better system?) i would say most likely, but the sharps only haveing one postion dose give them an edge as yes when it they had three spots it had the exact same problems if not worse but that was due to community role play of those that invested in getting one of the postions. so i think its safe to say that maybe we should have them match in ether three spots and let the community of the players for that district sort it out IG or match to just one spot each and agian let the community of players in the district at the time sort it out IG more of a band aid than a real long term salution but we could learn from a basic move with out acutaly cutting off a rollback should things go bad, we can least see if it dose balance it bit or how the community reacts in a IG way, remmber the farmland changes? not so bad, we got over the fact we couldnt basicly have 200 plants in a house any more, so shake up IG and see what happen in the game and make a choice based on whats learned?.

but i feel folk should note that even if we did find a decent balance, its not going to sort everything, as the leadership problem isnt the cuase of problems, just something that got hit with fallout from other things.

but for everyone looking to find the right facts i say acutaly read Durvayas post becouse agian yeah indetial she lists a few of the other things that we should be ware of when thinking on this kind of topic. all i can say is thats just from what i seen playing.

[Alox]

Beyond exiling a candidate before they have a chance to click the run for office button, I don't think it is the exile mechanic specifically that is an issue with election results as much as roleplayed pressure usually violent in nature, overall numbers, and time spent by active leadership characters pounding the pavement for support.

You only need to exile the leader of the opposition. Also the threat of exile means that if you have invested in a district then you are careful about joining the opposition, because exiles are doled out quite easily these days, and you will just loose everything you have invested in that district. This threat is enough to keep most people in line, who enjoys having a house where they can keep their crafting stuff and fiddle with things...

Just look at how boring the Sharpes has become. Not even a real fight to fill the vacuum after the strong leader exodus.

To try to stay on topic, I think that many of the people worried about leaving the three councillor system wouldn't be so worried if the exile system went through an overhaul. Keep it to 24 hours and not being able to redo it until significant IC events has happened, in line with the PvP 24 hour rule. Permanent exile should be a DM only tool against people who take an IC conflict into OOC territory. Goblins and dark elves can run into Cordor without the guards blinking an eye, but your political opponent cant mechanically go into their own house.

[WinkinBlinkin]

I've been in the position where I have gained power as second place, having one of my allies gain power as third. I felt we really bloody worked our arses off for that win and deserved it whole heartedly, with not a single piece of out of game communication taking place. The first place winners were one of those new houses that pop up on a regular basis and reach lvl 30 on 10+ closely allied players within a month. We beat them on a majority, but we probably wouldn't have on a single councillor vote. The sad thing is, we would probably have lost on the very first day they came into being as a faction, before any in game roleplay had even taken place. There is massive power in oocly formed factions, and anything that stands against that tendency needs to be applauded and nurtured, IMHO. I know I will get slated for saying this, but I also know THIS IS TRUE.

[Seekeepeek]

I tried the 3 person council a few times and ain't never doing that again. one time i ended up with two people who was American and played in odd hours (for me) so i either had to wake up at 4 am or play to 1-2 am to do anything with them (and i did). but on a personal level it was hellish and i can't recommend it to anyone. so if you end in a gang with people you can't met cause of real life, i advice you to withdraw from the leadership place for your own health's sake.