Checkup: Knight/Order Merger

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Leech
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Sun Sep 14, 2014 2:36 pm

I'm seriously considering splitting the knights and the Order again for
a few reasons. May I know how many of you would be doggedly against that?





- Kinky

Misune: After inquiry, I do agree that a splitting would probably be for
the best.

Lakali: I do not like the idea with that, the merge has to my knowledge
been wonderful because of little activity in the Order, and quicker access
with contacting the branches/roleplay.

Karrina: I believe that it is best that the two stay merged. First, I will
point out that Knight portion of the guild is still pretty active. While
this may seem that it is a reason for us to split, it is my opinion that it
really points out that the two should stay the same so as to not let that
one particular guild languish since there are not that many people
interested in such RP. There is still a clear chain of command for either
side, plus it is as Lakali stated. Communication is much better
facilitated between the two.

Gerolf: I could argue both ways: The priests have been crutched by the
Knights. If we split them the priests will have 3 active members and
potentially two other active members. That being said in many ways we
function as two separate guilds anyway. Kinky, what are your reasons for a
split?
Figured I would open this up to outside opinion and make it easier to read. I hate long discussions using the note system. Also, I feel like perhaps more than any other guild, Knight/Order things affect the game as a whole.

---------------------------------

With that said, I would vote in ENTIRELY the opposite direction. I think we should be merging them more, and having Knight Inquisitors (Knights trained in Inquisitorial and martial methods but not in priestly affairs/blessings or ecclesiastical education). The biggest thing I wish would happen would be the merging of the Grand Inquisitor and Earl Marshall roles. Not only does it make sense, but it would save the Order from effectively having four GLs with their hands in the pot and a say in what goes on.

Separating them at this point is a very bad idea, and will only undo the cohesion that past GLs have worked to foster. If anything, current GLs need to work together to bridge the gap growing.
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Voxumo
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Sun Sep 14, 2014 3:01 pm

Yeah, I can't say I very much agree with that view. A knight and an inquisitor are two very different things, and you can not be an inquisitor without also being trained in priestly affairs/blessings and ecclesiastical education. An inquisitor is essentially a priest still, just with more duties. The same goes for the grand inquisitor and Earl Marshall. There is no bloody way a single person could manage all the knights of the realm, and the oversee the entire inquisition of the realm.

It's just like a reeve being a knight as well or vice versa, while it could be potentially done, it would ultimately be frowned upon..

However karrina brings up a good point, the knights side of the order is active, while the order side of the order isn't really... So essentially by maintaining this merger you will be enabling the order to keep using the knights as a crutch. Afterall no matter how much people like to view it, the knights and order are two separate entities, and should be expected to maintain their own individual activity levels, not one side leeching off the work of the other side. If the order can't keep themselves properly active, it should not be the knights duty to keep them active.

However onto gerolf's statement, I asked the same question to kinaed a little after she posted the original note. One of the big reasons for this though of separation is because the coding does not support a guild with four guildleaders, thus causing staff to not be able to properly track, believe that was the term kinaed used, of the two second gls, Grand inquisitor and Grand master. Afterall those two gls are not even currently affected by the gl approval system due to the limitations of the coding.

So there is my honest view on this, i am all for a separation of the two guilds, like it once was.
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Inertia
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Sun Sep 14, 2014 6:42 pm

I'm assuming this was brought up as a personal board discussion initially so that the people it affects most directly could have first say. But to answer this question well I'd first like to know:

What are the reasons for the guild merge in the first place?
What are the reasons for splitting the guilds now?
What is the likelihood that the earlier issues might come back again?

In the history of TI, over its various incarnations, the Knights have been merged with both the Order (priests and inquisitors) and the Reeves because of the overlap in duties. By thematic definition, Knights are a combat faction that serve as bodyguards for the Order and as officers and/or special forces in the kingdom's military. Since the game focuses primarily on a single city, there aren't many opportunities for knights to serve that secondary function and current IC practices seem to discourage them from cross training as investigators of some sort - my assumption is because the ACTUAL investigative types (namely Inquisitors but often priests as well) are required to take certain vows that knights aren't, so if you can do all the fun stuff without the ban on sex, why bother being a priest?

I think the fact that they've merged and split before (and may do so again in the future) just proves that, all things considered, the pros and cons of Knights and Order being one guild balance out. The main ones (as I see them) being:

+ Ease of communication between branches of the Order
+++ gnotes!
+ Coded 'reminder' that Knights primarily serve the church

- Player/Character confusion over who to contact for joining
- Player/Character confusion over who the guildleaders are
- Cardinal (GL1) tends not to have training to support serving as Knightly leader in absence of Earl Marshall (GL2) and vice versa


By THEME, knights, priests and inquisitors are three branches of the SAME organization. The benefits of having them in separate coded guilds are entirely OOC and while that doesn't invalidate the fact that there ARE benefits, I think historically it's created more divisiveness between groups that are essential to the game but also chronically understaffed.

All this said, IF the knights and clergy could be separated so their guildleaders all show up appropriately, but they could be given a shared chat channel and gnotes, I think that might provide a better balance of autonomy and communication.

Whichever way it goes, I want to say thanks to the Orderites who are making an effort to be out interacting with the public. :D Thanks!

Dice
Posts: 479
Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2011 6:15 pm

Sun Sep 14, 2014 7:40 pm

I am very in favor of the current setup; I feel the minuses of the GL confusion are strongly outweighed by the pluses of gnotes and, more importantly, the reminder that the Knights are the military arm of the Order. I recall an awful lot of tension and trouble with duties and powers and precedence in the past that I feel the merger has greatly reduced.

If the GL issue is a big concern, fixing guilds for the role system might kill this bird as well with a stone that is quite prolific in many other ways.

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Leech
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Sun Sep 14, 2014 11:43 pm

There is no bloody way a single person could manage all the knights of the realm, and the oversee the entire inquisition of the realm.
We have plenty of IC roles who oversee more, I.E. Monarch/Regent, Cardinal. They do it via careful management and thoughtful delegation. With that said, it's as simple as empowering a role. There's no law that says theme cannot change - and in fact a changing theme due to IC precedent (and there is a LOT of IC precedent to support certain Knights, Knights who show themselves capable, to take up investigative tracks) only goes to show how powerful IC interaction can be. There is no reason why, in special circumstances, Knight and Inquisitor duties cannot overlap - and the benefits, both OOCly and ICly, would be great. However, Inertia brings up a good point: it might make priests and Inquisitors obsolete. I believe that it would force them to redefine their own roles in the Order - and come up with a more diverse, powerful niche for themselves. Also, it would allow an entirely new role to grow and benefit the theme.

Dice brings up one of my fears as well: from what I've seen Knight GLs generally have a very hard time being controlled by who, thematically, should be their superiors. If there is trouble incorporating the second GLs into the GL system, there are a few ways to take care of that rather than doubling back on a merger which has been both beneficial, and arguably, crucial to both information sharing and the hasty, practical carrying out of IC law - a subject which is at best iffy, considering how OOCly frustrated people get at long, drawn out jail proceedings.

1. Per Dice, make roles a priority and roll the second GLs into that.

2. Remove Earl Marshall and Grand Master as GL roles in the Order: BOTH these GLs, thematically, report to the Grand Inquisitor and Cardinal - who are the true Order leaders. This would remove the assumption that the Earl Marshall is above the Grand Inquisitor (since EM is a first GL via code, and GI is second). Their titles and roles could be retained, but their ranks knocked down to high-tier members of the different Order branches.
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Gerolf
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Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:27 pm

Mon Sep 15, 2014 12:52 pm

So, I would like to address a few of the issues here, regarding theme. I know I haven't been a member long but I have had many discussions about it and I have read and reread many of the help files before I posted this.

1) Help Precedence makes it very clear. The two highest players are the Matriarch/Patriarch and the Regent. Cardinals are first tier, third level but the history shows that the Cardinal of Lithmore is also the Patriarch of the church (help people patriarch, help people cardinal). The Grand Inquisitor is a peer to the Lord Steward, The Earl Marshall, and the Lord Justiciar, the last three being Great Lords (Second tier, first level), ergo for religious matters everybody reports to the Cardinal.

2) Per the Erra Pater, and the Five Declarations, the fifth declaration is the law of confession: Only a vested priest can take confession, and confession is a must.

3) Help people inquisitors says, plainly, that inquisitors are at a minimum full priests though typically they are bishops before transferring over.

4) All of this compounds into my understanding that Inquisitors whole purpose in life is to extract a confession from mages and heretics, by force if they have to, so that the taint can be removed and even the most stubborn souls will find their way to the Lord of Springs. Only a priest could be the one to grant that absolution.

So here is my opinion for what it is worth: Knight Inquisitors, ain't gonna happen unless we change the theme. Knights act as the Order's Reeves, doing arrests and collecting evidence but the actual investigation and review has to be done by a priest. Does this mean that Inquisitors don't need the Knights, absolutely not! They are critical for the theme.

OOCly, I think I agree with the suggestion that if we can split them into two guilds but keep the shared gnotes, that would be best, otherwise the EM and the GI are going to spend half of their time just sending letters back and forth and then writing gnotes. That is fine, but limits the time we get to RP, and we like to RP too.

I whole heartily disagree with removing the EM as a GL. If we have to consolidate GLs then the First should be the Cardinal and the Second the EM. There is IC precedence for the Cardinal to act as GI when the need arises, but the Cardinal has never had command authority over the knights in general, only in times of dire need and then only until the GM or the EM can arrive. This is something that Misune and Gerolf have tried very hard to respect.

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Voxumo
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Mon Sep 15, 2014 1:17 pm

I agree with many of the statements you have said Gerolf, and while I don't see the whole gnotes thing as that pressing of an issue, especially since in the time before gnotes, everyone used mail, and the world did not fall into despair.

And I especially agree with your statement about the separation of inquisitors and knights... each take on very different training for very different things.
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Kinaed
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Mon Sep 15, 2014 4:46 pm

I'm happy to have this discussion publically, but I would like to kindly ask that people don't copy my personal board notes into public domain as a matter of courtesy.

The reasons we merged the Order and Knights:
- Knights are functionally required for the Order to do their job and the knights and Order players had little to do with one another and a low relationship/trust factor
- The guilds were both lacking in numbers.

The reasons I'm considering pulling them apart:
- It is very hard when the code is set up to monitor two GLs to monitor 4. This is seriously problematic when the Grand Inquisitor is off the map.
- The above issues resolved themselves. The knights are strong and quite active as they go.

Knight Inquisitors don't bother me deeply, but they definitely aren't the current theme. What we often see when the guilds are separate, however, is a knight going all judge, jury and exectioner on a mage before an Inquisitor even knows a mage was found, then trying to string up the Inq if the Inq doesn't immediately agree with the knight that person X is definitely a mage. That said, appointing all Reeves in that manner has been jist fine for that guild, so a thematic merge in that direction doesn't seem to be a functional problem for the game. So, if players prefer that, overall, I don't mi d if that's what the Order evolves to.

That said, I need, for very important staff reasons, to cut the GLs in that guild down to 2, and it's very important that particular roles don't go off the radar.

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Zeita
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Mon Sep 15, 2014 5:53 pm

As a non-knight and non-cleric, I don't really have much skin in the game right now, but from past experience as knight GL and through playing several Cardinals/Grand Inquisitors/Inquisitors, I liked the feel of them as separate guilds. I like that bit of potential conflict when they're governed separately and don't always see eye-to-eye.

I'm inclined to think that the Grand Inquisitor and Earl Marshall are both very core game roles and should both be displaying on 'guildleader' (along with the Cardinal). People -need- to know who the Grand Inquisitor is for the simple need to report mana crimes, and there have been several times in the last six months that I have no clue at all. Equally, I wouldn't want to downgrade the Earl Marshall. The knights have their own culture that I believe needs a full and proper GL to maintain and promote properly through their IC actions and recruitment activity/rituals. (I would also posit that being in their own guild helps to enforce this as well.) I'm also against knight-inquisitor role merges/responsibility blending from past experiences with it.

If sharing gnotes is doable, that would be rocking. In fact, even as merchant GL, if I could target some of my gnotes as cross-guild, that would be awesome functionality for collaborative projects or whatever. On the other hand, I rather miss sending big group mails, as the physical artifact of a letter is an interactive IC thing that can be stolen, given away, etc, which can be great when dealing with politics, shady dealings or inquisitions.

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Voxumo
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Mon Sep 15, 2014 10:51 pm

[quote="Kinaed"

Knight Inquisitors don't bother me deeply, but they definitely aren't the current theme. What we often see when the guilds are separate, however, is a knight going all judge, jury and exectioner on a mage before an Inquisitor even knows a mage was found, then trying to string up the Inq if the Inq doesn't immediately agree with the knight that person X is definitely a mage. That said, appointing all Reeves in that manner has been jist fine for that guild, so a thematic merge in that direction doesn't seem to be a functional problem for the game. So, if players prefer that, overall, I don't mi d if that's what the Order evolves to.
[/quote]

I would like to say that in regards to knights going all judge, jury and executioner is something that hasn't happened recently, unless you count times where death was unadvoidable, example being marril. Knights tried to bring her in, but ultimately death was what had to be done.

So I do think that is one thing that has resolved itself. Plus knights now have rules in place to prevent the whole judge, jury and executioner problem.
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