Player Power System

[Jes]

Hi! See this announcement regarding the shift to a system for player power in settlements. Do you have questions? Concerns? Seeking clarity? Just wanna comment?

We will be posting a full guideline soon (I've put so many hours into this; it's gonna be thorough!), and the system itself isn't entirely ready to be put into place, but we wanted to be transparent about this very important shift in how things are going to be run in our settlements. After sooooo many years of DMs being the only ones who can be in charge via NPCs, it's a significant change and I hope to see it create a shift for players, too, as players can take the helm, form their own governments, and influence the directions of settlements directly.

[Dunecat]

This is a good direction. I'm looking forward to future development, in hope that currently outlined system will be flexible to reflect player initiative and RP.

[Dunecat]

First impression of power transition event: cluncky and rushed.

[Jes]

Thank you, that's very helpful.

[Puresoul]

The first power transition was a bit chaotic but it ended peacefully. It was probably for best given the situation on the isle. Also, it was simple enough for me to get through while being rather ill. So, thanks for that.

[Jes]

Chaotic was fully expected, given the chaotic evil NPCs being used, but glad it wasn't too crazy for sick you!

[The Gentleman]

Is rathgaard a minor settlement under Ostland rule?

[Jes]

Rethgaard is just a keep for one purpose. Like Salandran Temple, Kampo's, etc. Those places will not have a settlement entry because they're not settlements. They're just businesses or things specifically dedicated to one thing without any intent to expand, grow, or change at this time.

[The Gentleman]

So what are they selling?

[Jes]

Chicken eggs.

[Dunecat]

Satisfaction Rating.

It appears to be included to both encourage involvement of players and give reflection of that involvement. However, it is currenty unclear whether or not it will reflect sources of income of the settlement(s) and factions themselves (NPCs for the settlement included), or if it is a money sink for a PCs for the sake of having a money sink.

[Jes]

It's not about being a money sink. It's about encouraging interaction and engagement with the world and not just sitting around doing nothing because there's nothing you have to do.

(Royal you.)

[walnutboy]

It's not about being a money sink. It's about encouraging interaction and engagement with the world and not just sitting around doing nothing because there's nothing you have to do.

(Royal you.)

Having people hunt for gold or work for resources to manage an area doesn't sound very much like encouraging interaction, if anything if feels like a pay to win with a gacha mechanic at worst. Without actually having an example of figures it's hard to form any meaningful opinion. I mean we don't know if we'd be expected to stump up a million in gold on a weekly basis or just 50k at the moment... and those figures mean a lot and will likely affect how much people will choose to get involved with an area.

Gold sink is perhaps one word, but it could also be a time sink and depending on the time needed to manage rather than actively play and enjoy, interest will likely vary wildly. Will the burden of running a Settlement rest solely on the shoulders of the few players who choose to lead? If so that could be very unattractive when they are expected to provide everything just to reap rewards. Is the system going to take in to account the NPC's ... whose presence and amount vary just as much as the players from place to place, so again makes it unattractive.

While you may think I'm being negative, as a player, I'm being asked to blindly go with something without seeing what it'll cost going forward, like agreeing to buy a car but never actually being given a price but still expected to pay... whatever, we'll work it out later. For a system like this to work it needs to be both straight up for all to see and understand while also being fair across the board.

[Pinkhaml86]

It also needs to be tested. And adjusted, and tweaked, which is the phase of development we are in right now. So no, there isn't a price set right now because we don't know what the price is going to be.

[Elorathall]

Being expected to host a weekly or bi-weekly event is quite a high expectation. Not only because of RL engagements, but because there is also only so much for characters to engage with/about without a matching frequency of DM's stirring the pot. Moreover, there are literally more settlements than there are days in the week to have meetings on, and not enough players to support a permanent PC population in every settlement.

Suggestion:
1. It's not a hard rule right now, but perhaps the expectation could be lowered to one event/meeting once every three or four weeks, at least?
2. The expectation could be clustered for kingdoms or regions with multiple settlements. For example, it's expected that there is at least one settlement event/meeting every 3 weeks for the kingdom of Kohlingen, but this can rotate between the different actual settlements depending on circumstances and activity.

[Jes]

That was listed solely as a recommendation. Not a rule or expectation.


That said, I personally don't think it's too much to ask for people in positions of power to do something in-game once every 14 days.

[charles1810]

Would have to agree, with great power comes responsibility to your people.

[The Gentleman]

honestly i might try again now that i may be able to interact with the settlement more than last time, however to improve upon it i'd suggest having an npc in the pocket that could at least tell players how the settlement feels and whatnot.

[The Gentleman]

I like the route the team is going.

[Jes]

Player Power Update as of January 9th, 2023.

This is a current status of the rolling out of the new player power system as we've been going, now that we're 3 months into the initiative.

The DMs have been doing an excellent job of helping the interested players move into the positions and systems. See here for full list of settlements and the positions that are filled by PCs. Anything filled by an NPC or vacant is readily available for a PC to take through RP which DMs are happy to facilitate if you let us know you need us.

Reminder: Each player can have only one PC in all of the Primary/Secondary/Tertiary positions throughout all settlements, which means that no one on the current list is allowed to take any position that is open elsewhere on the Open list.

I have included some stats to address the concern about staff filling up player power positions. I think the spread is pretty good. Our staff members are pretty active players in general, so it makes sense they've been active and diligent enough to push for participation in the new system. I do of course encourage everyone to reach out to us to help facilitate if you want to get involved! Other players in these settlements are also excellent resources for getting involved in settlements/regions that have both regular activity and vacancies. Every single settlement has at least one position that is open for pursuit by a player, and also existing roles that are filled by a PC can also be taken through appropriate RP if that's where the RP goes.

But here's where we are currently since we started rolling it out!



All current players with official settlement leader PCs

• Pending (Decided, but not fully finalized)
  • Jes - Dev/DM for 13 years
  • Beans - DM for 1 month
  • Amarice - Former DM (left 3 months ago)
  • Dunecat - Never been Staff
  • T0mc4t - Never been Staff
  Currently Finalized
  • Xantham - Former DM (left 9 months ago)
  • Puresoul - Former Dev (left 10 months ago)
  • Revak - Never been Staff
  • Frozen-Ass - Dev for 1 year
  • Dovesong - Dev/DM for 2 years
  • Mahtan - DM/Dev for 3 years
  • Albacksen - DM for 3 years
  • Elyon - Former DM (left 14 months ago)
  • Rafaelmacgyver - Former DM (left 2 years ago)
  • Karrados - Former DM (left 2 years ago)
  • ninjamonkey2000 - Dev for 7 months
  • SonicX - Tester for 2 years

Current status is thus:

• 4 current DMs have a player leadership position. 2 are Primary roles at the Regional level (both still pending).
• 4 current Devs/Testers have player leadership positions. 2 are Primary roles.
• 5 former DMs have player leadership positions. 1 is a Primary role at the Regional level. 2 are Primary roles.
• 1 former Dev has a player leadership position. It is a Primary role.
• 3 players who have never been staff have player leadership positions. 1 is a Primary role at the Regional level (still pending). 2 are Primary roles (1 still pending).

Settlements Transitioned:

• 4 Regional-Level Primary transitioned (3 pending)
• 8 settlements transitioned with at least 1 Primary role filled by a PC (or who have Acting Primary PCs waiting for a new election)
• 3 Regional-Level leadership structures have at least 1 Open Primary position
• 30 settlements have at least 1 Open Primary position (or currently filled by an NPC)

Positions Filled vs. Open (either Vacant or currently filled by an NPC):

• 8 positions Filled by current staff members
• 6 positions Filled by former staff members
• 3 positions Filled by players who have never been staff
• 24 total Regional positions Open throughout all 6 Regions (doesn't account for more Regional Councils, so could be more)
• 108 total positions Open throughout all 36 settlements (doesn't account for more Councils, so could be more)

With the explanation shown above (Disclaimer: it may be slightly off because I'm exhausted, but the post I linked above has all the Filled/Open positions up-to-date with current RP), I wanted to illustrate that there are just a LOT of opportunities for people at every level. I encourage everyone who wants to participate to jump in and start RP'ing toward taking over/filling vacant roles - or even vying with existing leaders to take it from them!

[Bag of Felt]

And for the record, there are staff, current and former, that have no leadership positions.

[The Gentleman]

staff or no staff shouldn't need to matter honestly. I just wish we could keep players so that different aligned groups could form.

[Elorathall]

As it stands, settlement leadership is an empty box without any gameplay to it - because of a few reasons that all contribute to each other.

1) Low server population: At present, you might well have more settlements than you have players interested in settlement leadership. Which means the PC population is so thin across regions there's little to RP within/around the settlement itself - except with those nomadic PC's that migrate from meeting to meeting but won't really commit to any place.

2) Conflict aversion: Paradoxically, the game is easier .. because nobody wants to risk anything anymore. Many characters in Amia are ancient and very precious, not to be risked at an cost (according to their players). Add to that conflict is actively discouraged by the server culture - which is a result of DM's actively discouraging it. So people are not incentivized to quarrel with their neighbors.

3) Settlement & PC self-sufficiency: What would they even quarrel about? Settlements are all self-sufficient, and the ideological conflict between Cordor, Tarkuul, Wiltun, and Kohlingen was taken behind the shed and put down (see point 2).

4) Responsibilities but no means: The rules for settlement leadership explicitly mention a requirement of organizing events very regularly. But players don't have the means to do so. How many fairs can you really organize? How many story nights until you run out of stories? What exactly am I supposed to be doing once I've gotten the module updates I wanted IG?

So, to make settlement leadership more interesting, a few suggestions:
1) Concentrate resources. Put the useful job system nodes where it makes sense for them to be, and concentrate them geographically. There was already an IC pre-agreement for Greengarden to export grain and food to Barak Runedar in exchange for metals, for example. This trade makes sense and encourages RP between settlement leadership. Make territory control important for settlements.

2) Resources tied into NPC economy. This doesn't have to be a complex system - but you could create an overall policy where a settlement of x population needs access to 'x' amount of nodes of type 'y' to survive. Say a population of 100 people needs to have access to 2 "food" nodes, and 1 "lumber" node. We don't have to over-complicate it, but having some kind of tiered requirements for this would make trade agreements and territory conflict meaningful. Do you want to grow your town/population? You need to secure access to __ more of ___ - either through direct control, or for trading a "node" in your territory for a node of another type in someone else's territory.

3) Split up the NPC hive mind. This has been IMO one of the worst evolutions of the server. During the Golden Age of the conflict between Cordor, Tarkuul, Wiltun, and Kohlingen, each of these realms had their own internal NPC factions (official and de facto). This was very explicit in Cordor, but also existed in the others. Since then, the NPC population of each realm has become a monolithic hive mind with, for all purposes and intents, the same overall goals and opinions. It's not only unrealistic and infuriating (I'll explain why in the Form Feedback thread), but it also denies what separates Factions from Settlements. Factions are 100% PC's with perhaps some NPC retainers. Settlements are primarily NPC-populated. PC's that want leadership there will need to balance the interests and expectations of those NPC's.

An old server I played in also had PC leadership of a major city. PC's could be elected by the population and PC's to council positions. But the city was made up of different powerful NPC factions, such as competing merchant houses, different army units, different guilds - all with their own overall (and often conflicting) goals. PC's needed to get the backing of at least one faction to get elected, at the expense of gaining the opposition of other factions. Not only does this force choices and costs - and leadership is about politics, no matter how you swing it - it was also a great hook for DM's to stir things up when a PC's "backers" suddenly started calling in favors, or NPC factions started undermining them.

2 cents, hopefully constructive.

[Jes]

I think this is good food for thought to get DMs thinking about how to interact with players as we work through installing the new system.