What should TI Court be?

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Kinaed
Posts: 1984
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:54 pm
Discord Handle: ParaVox3#7579

Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:04 pm

Through a series of broad changes from TI through to TI:L, Court has changed.

Historically, court was the place nobles met to curry favor, form alliances, introduce or marry off children, and avoid their daily responsibilities in ruling their domains. TI never really realized this well for numerous reasons. First, the game was designed to have multiple social groups, and there has never been enough pbase to properly foster a court while still making way for the lower classes. Second, Court by its very nature represented ruling the realm, which meant a broad focus on events happening outside and around Lithmore as opposed to within it. Broadly, this was problematic for 'political play that everyone could get involved in'. Finally, there wasn't much to do as a noble beyond sitting around looking pretty and fighting over petty irritants. The players who did well at nobility tended to be the ones who loved the culture of playing a noble, but a lot of the burden was on the player to come up with drivers for RP.

As our noble character base declined, and TI shifted to fostering the best RP possible within the "ecosystem of a city". Court fell by the wayside. Then, when we felt we'd shored up a lot of playability in general, we went back and focused on making nobles fun again. However, Court sort of has become a 'thing that happens in the background'. Noble characters can draw upon it if they please or not, and it's up to the Seneschal to decide how they want to run with it as 'a thing'. Is this good? Bad? Should it be more structured or no? What should it be?

I'm curious what players think, so please tell us!

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Taunya
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Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:15 pm

I think the court could be more of a thing, if the queen routinely held court. Perhaps OOC monthly after one of the OOC chats?
Could be broken up in two parts- audience time for the masses, and then break off and give the nobles a little private time with the queen.

The trick is how to do it without undermining the responsibility of the Keeper of the Seal PC position.

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Kinaed
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Discord Handle: ParaVox3#7579

Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:22 pm

I'd imagine the Keeper of the Seal/Seneschal could hold court monthly on the Queen's behalf if they wanted to. We rolled the the Keeper of the Seal into the Seneschal role so that the become the Queen's stand-in representative and essentially the PC monarch (with niceties such as term limits so the game didn't stagnate under a single PC ruler).

The Queen is just the staff's 'safety net' in case anything goes severely pear-shaped. Even that risk has been drastically reduced, however, now that we have gambit systems and stuff. *ponder*

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Taunya
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Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:36 pm

It's great that we've got the OOC chats to talk about how things are going OOCly, but for IC matters, it can feel a bit difficult to address things.

If the queen herself held court as a way for people to bring up IC issues, it'd give an outlet for such.
The queen herself could refrain from making decisions, leaving it to the Court to discuss after the general audience is over. But she'd be there to refer to should there be any question on how a matter should be handled, or there to veto if something starts to head towards the unthematic.

I think it'd give the Court more power and focus, something for them to actually do and know they'd have the backing for any decisions that'd be made.

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Buzz K[ir]ill
Posts: 172
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2018 3:42 pm

Sat Feb 02, 2019 11:24 pm

Kinaed wrote:
Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:04 pm
Through a series of broad changes from TI through to TI:L, Court has changed.

Historically, court was the place nobles met to curry favor, form alliances, introduce or marry off children, and avoid their daily responsibilities in ruling their domains. TI never really realized this well for numerous reasons. First, the game was designed to have multiple social groups, and there has never been enough pbase to properly foster a court while still making way for the lower classes. Second, Court by its very nature represented ruling the realm, which meant a broad focus on events happening outside and around Lithmore as opposed to within it. Broadly, this was problematic for 'political play that everyone could get involved in'. Finally, there wasn't much to do as a noble beyond sitting around looking pretty and fighting over petty irritants. The players who did well at nobility tended to be the ones who loved the culture of playing a noble, but a lot of the burden was on the player to come up with drivers for RP.

As our noble character base declined, and TI shifted to fostering the best RP possible within the "ecosystem of a city". Court fell by the wayside. Then, when we felt we'd shored up a lot of playability in general, we went back and focused on making nobles fun again. However, Court sort of has become a 'thing that happens in the background'. Noble characters can draw upon it if they please or not, and it's up to the Seneschal to decide how they want to run with it as 'a thing'. Is this good? Bad? Should it be more structured or no? What should it be?

I'm curious what players think, so please tell us!
City council + noble projects has opened up a lot of avenues and made noble RP a lot more fun and interesting for me this time around. A problem with Court in the past was that you could create all the structure you wanted, but if there weren't people who could fill the roles, why bother? Right now we have a more balanced system for the size of the pbase -- loosely structured and fairly stable, with some good gray areas that allow for political intrigue. Court is indeed now more of a background thing, and ultimately, I think that's fine, because we just don't have the numbers to maintain a narrow focus. The city council has the advantage of drawing in many of our top activity/most stable players (GLs), while noble projects give nobs even more reasons to schmooze with non-nobles.

In my RP, I tend to assume there are always a few "background nobles" who mingle at the Palace when they're passing through Lithmore (or more, when the Queen is in town), but nobs in residence who want to be active in LOCAL politics naturally gravitate more to the city center, which is how it actually works out in day-to-day RP.

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Buzz K[ir]ill
Posts: 172
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2018 3:42 pm

Sat Feb 02, 2019 11:35 pm

Taunya wrote:
Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:36 pm
It's great that we've got the OOC chats to talk about how things are going OOCly, but for IC matters, it can feel a bit difficult to address things.

If the queen herself held court as a way for people to bring up IC issues, it'd give an outlet for such.
The queen herself could refrain from making decisions, leaving it to the Court to discuss after the general audience is over. But she'd be there to refer to should there be any question on how a matter should be handled, or there to veto if something starts to head towards the unthematic.

I think it'd give the Court more power and focus, something for them to actually do and know they'd have the backing for any decisions that'd be made.
Unfortunately, I think this would be a step backward and a drain on staff resources. It's on the Keeper/Seneschal to make the tough decisions and to hold those meetings. I don't think we want to start a trend where the PC in power feels like they have to get the OK from the NPC Queen any time they want to make a decision -- or feel pressured to get her opinion in order to make the "right" one. I don't speak for staff, obviously, but I think the whole point of putting the power in the hands of the Keeper/Seneschal is to give them the freedom of making the tough choices and run things the way they want to without forming some kind of staff-dependent relationship outside of normal RPA.

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Buzz K[ir]ill
Posts: 172
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2018 3:42 pm

Sat Feb 02, 2019 11:42 pm

All that said, I think it's good to have the Queen pop in every once and a while (every six months with the change in Seneschal, at least?) to remind us all she exists and to give us all an excuse to get together at the Palace.

Starstarfish
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Discord Handle: Starstarfish#4572

Sun Feb 03, 2019 3:39 am

I think the thing is that back in the day ... Court existed from what I can tell as a venue by which courtiers (Gentry) could schmooze and through various manners earn themselves noble titles. That's the backstory of relevant folks or their family lineage in recent times. It's a feature in several prominent stories from "yon olden days." However, that is no longer the focus and the Council and politics therein for projects et al has taken the place of that original drive.

That said, something I think might help or add to the idea of "stuff" or the general idea of a Court might be the occasional (maybe once an OOC month?) insight to the Seneschal/Keeper about "goings on" with the Queen/the wider Kingdom that could be reported to folks. IE what are some of those NPC/vNPC nobles doing and a bit of gossip to RP around might provide some stuff to gossip about the wider world.

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galaxgal
Posts: 209
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:32 pm

Mon Feb 04, 2019 4:16 pm

I like the idea of a Seneschal holding court. Since the position can rotate between characters, that also means there's always the potential for interesting or 'dangerous' moves as the patterns or traditions potentially shift with leadership, which I think is more interesting than having the Queen pop in constantly to manage it same-as-ever.

(I'm not meaning *no* queen presence ever, mind! - just that I feel it should be reserved as a special occasion.)
Around sometimes. Contact: galaxgal#6174

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