Noble Land

[Leech]

I'm actually not sure if I brought this up before, but here goes!

What if the nobility owned the lands, and rented it out to people? So, when you wanted to buy that bitchin' player home, you'd actually have to go through the nobility, and pay them the 'down payment', plus probable monthly taxes since you'd be renting the land, not owning it.

And what if only nobility could own the land?

1. We'd give nobility a lot more power.
2. We'd make the real estate job a part of the noble's responsibilities instead of... whoever's it is now. Ideally, since we have quite a few nobility, the work would be split quite a few ways.
3. Provide a lot of RP between nobles and merchants. We'd actually see that power struggle between the two, and the co-dependence, as merchants had to buy land from nobles, and nobles had to keep the merchants happy to keep all their fancy stuff.
4. We'd actually see an estate system in action, rather than the current stuff which I think is largely under the table?
5. We'd give nobility another source of income. I don't know how any nobles make money, currently, besides the big-wigs.

Questions/Thoughts/Concerns?

[Puciek]

I like. Simply move the land tax/part of costs from black hole they go currently with noble wallets.

[Cellan]

I like the idea. From my perspective, though, I'd like to know how this chimes up with the Crown, and how much a cut it'd get from it. Technically, I believe, nobles hold their titles in good faith from the Throne, and act as stewards and leaders of the provinces that they're granted by the monarch. Would the nobility be private land owners, and if so, why could the gentry not do the same thing? If we'd want to move to a system like this, then I think that any rich player should be able to do it.

[Kinaed]

Generally, I like it. But I'm thinking of how it could work.

I wanted to look at having an IP system for ownership of locations on grid, but I wasn't sure what that would mean game-wise.

It could be something like investing IP into a room provides a noble income - only nobles could invest IP that way. Then, if someone wants to purchase a home, etc, they need the permission of the room's owner to attach to it? I'd like to see some other commands, etc, that room owners could have. We thought about 'escort' to boot people off their property, but it seemed like it'd be hard to ICly explain if someone just booted someone else off their land mid-sentence while the two were alone or something.

It'd be great if we had the player POLCA working to allow them to build rooms, etc, as a skilled trade...

[Leech]

@Kin: I figured it'd be money, and strictly money. If you wanted to keep it out of code for now, you could simply attach a price to every home on grid now, and whatever noble wanted to pay it would own the land. Obviously if a noble already lived in a house, they would own it. Freemen with homes already would obviously get the short end of the stick.

However, I do like the idea of influence playing a part in it, especially if we give bards a way to directly affect other people's influence. That way nobles become dependent upon bards, too. I don't like the idea of hard coded commands to escort people off though, I think I'd rather that be done by the owners mobs that they buy from all the money they're getting from their land owning.

Ideally, yes it'd be pretty awesome to build a homestead as a skill, but from what I've seen the code isn't too flexible. Is it even possible?

@Cellan: I was thinking that this would be a noble right, more than something any rich person can do. Because they are nobility, they can own land, not because they are rich. In this system, gentry would be gentry because they use the noble's land really well.

But, I'm open to ideas, really. I just think that if you give this power to gentry, some of the benefits of it are lost.

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Mostly this idea comes from Puciek, via a conversation on OOC. He brought up the fact that the nobility don't really have much 'solid' power. While I haven't tested it enough, I do know that land ownership would be friggen cool, and an awesome way to support the economy and playerbase.

[Dice]

I don't know how I feel about this.

ICly, I think it's problematic because I don't think it's established only nobility can own land, especially in a city. It might very well be true out in their own domains, but in Lithmore City proper? I dunno.

Actually making nobles handle the real estate stuff would be problematic on a systems side as well because right now staff does all that. It would be a real burden to have to liaise with PCs on any kind of phome request, considering the numbers that are processed.

Now, I'd LOVE to see a wealth mechanic for nobility that at least pays some lip service to the idea they have the resources of an entire domain... but I think my feeling is this would be best settled by a revisiting of the old asset system we've talked about before.

[Geras]

I'm not sure how workable this would be given how some nobles go inactive and then active or visa versa, and how the number of nobles fluctuates.

[wimple]

It'd be unrealistic for land ownership to be 'up for grabs' in Lithmore proper. Assumedly, it'd all be owned by the crown - nobles themselves actually own the lands in their domains, not in the city itself. I can't imagine the Queen (who I'd assume would own the Lithmore barony) would be handing out vast tracks of the lands to the nobles that live here - assumedly, it'd be her land that she's renting out to them. Otherwise that's just room for rebellion.

So such a thing could be consolidated through the ex chequer of the Queen, but that may be a big burden on them.

How would this impact the Reeves and the taxpay system? Would the taxes on the land be going to the nobility instead of the Reeves or whatever it goes now? Or do the taxes continue to happen and it's just the initial purchase with the nobles? Will Reeves still be easily able to see who is paying an who isn't to establish fines? Etc.

[Cellan]

That was my impression too, Wimpled.

[Geras]

Well, the taxes go to the Crown now, precisely because Lithmore is the Crown's domain. The Reeves are under the employ of the Crown.