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If a week goes by and there hasn’t been a development on either the wedding front or any other plan, I’ll just go ahead with the Voidus idea. We do need to get something moving soon. @Sorana When is the wedding happening? I think you’re involved.

The Voidus release plan is good to go, we’re mainly just waiting for the wedding to happen before we start it. I don’t know if the attack is actually happening or if it’s just a joke.

I think a draft of your laws would be an excellent starting point. The difference between a centralised government controlled by multiple political factions and a police force controlled by a single person is that the distribution of power is a lot different. When you first proposed the idea, a codified government was not on people’s minds, and most of us assumed you’d basically be following your own laws. Now that a government exists, a police force would be a much more reasonable idea. They’re not necessarily mutually exclusive.

It’s been seventeen years of coexisting without any problems. There are people of voting age who don’t remember the Seven Day War. (That actually works out nicely for people who join in Era 3, actually, since their characters don’t have a reason to know about past events.) Cities tend to have a sort of lifecycle, and without an actual government that puts the city solidly in its adolescent phase. Without laws, I’d find it likely that murder and theft would be fairly common among the lower classes - something that wouldn’t bother PCs, but would bother the disenfranchised. For that reason I can imagine them eventually agreeing to form a sort of legislative government. Yes, there will always be a conflict between them, but between political factions there is always conflict. I can see the three groups agreeing to work together for the good of the city.

The last time TUBA tried to fight the DA, it ended... poorly. *remembers the Phoenix destroying literally everything and 30% casualty rates* I'd imagine they'd likely just get used to the fact that their enemies aren't going anywhere and they'd be best just trying to work around them via diplomacy.

If we go for the Great Guilds idea, then other guilds like the Thief’s Guild and the Diagramists (possibly) would also qualify, bumping the number up. I’d hate to see the number of major guilds limited to just the major three. I would also get behind one vote per guild, as that prevents guilds from lots of people from just dominating every vote (like in the cookie vote which won with 106 to about 10). I don’t think that will happen on such a scale, but it may occur, and causes problems for smaller guilds.

FYI for everyone: Team Chartreuse has a Voidus release plan ready to go and guilds willing to oppose them in a battle. We’re good to go whenever the wedding is nearing completion.

The worldbuilder in me wants the government to be a sort of faction-led democracy - not the people of the Alleycity voting, but major guilds voting among themselves. All the Great Guilds get a vote. That makes the most sense to me, and adds an extra dynamic and layer of depth to the interplay between guilds - voting politics. Sort of like the Rose Empire in Emperor’s Soul, with all the different factions voting on behalf of the population. However, I understand if an all-inclusive democracy is realistically a better choice. This system doesn’t really work for people who are independent but want to be involved in the political aspect.

Seeing that he was speaking to nobody in particular, Alum grabbed a small card and scribbled his details onto it. “I assume someone will come round at some point to clean up the bodies,” he said, explaining to the glowing figure who needed some exposition. “My request and details are on here.” He tossed the card onto the ground. “Hopefully the cleanup crew is punctual.” The card read: Two nicrosil spikes of large size in good condition required. Withdraw from Craftsmen account and deliver to Liebrarian guild. -Alum

Alum walked through the front door, followed by an individual that appeared to be formed from Selish symbols. The two of them surveyed the carnage that had occurred. “Do you still do deliveries?” he asked.

I think of it this way: Voidus will be released eventually. The sooner we do it, the less mad and therefore destructive he will be.

Unfortunately, it appears I won’t have time to analyse any further this round. Fura, for reasons I outlined in my previous post. Ookla of the East’s logic seems sound to me as well.

Again, breaking the poll into Voidus/plague/bombs/big battle/dogs/other would provide more options. I also think that most people would be adverse to their characters dying in a plague, and that some have personal reasons against it. It’s a passive conflict, not an active one. @Kidpen (This actually leaves me really conflicted, because I’m all for the Voidus plan but against the plague, but they’re not separate options.)

Sure, but we can just say that the duels were set in a time where they ended before the final battle began. It wouldn’t be too hard to understand, and won’t affect the RP too much.

Continuity? (laughs) Er, I mean, they can always be set before the final battle. Era 2 duels can continue into Era 3, I wouldn’t delay the final event for that. EDIT: I’d probably break the Voidus and plague option into two, especially since Sorana has outlined personal reasons for avoiding the latter option. @Kidpen

Greetings all. Hopefully I can be more active next cycle and start placing more established reads on people. These are more like quick, uninformed sketches that are most likely missing information, but I thought I should at least post something. Karnatheon (village) Karn’s worries about being lynched, while usually damning for experienced players, are NAI here: I wouldn’t go so far to clear them entirely, but I have stated in the past about the survivor mindset, and it’s something that often gets new players lynched. Aside from that, I’m mostly gutreading them as village, and especially since this is one of their first games I think it would be harder for them to hide their mistakes. Fura (slightly elim) The double vote on Drought seems... odd. If someone doesn’t respond to an initial pokevote, then it’s very unlikely that they’ll respond to a second, so if you were trying to incite discussion you’d probably be much better in spreading your pokevote around. In addition to that, doing maths analysis about the rings in order to disguise a lack of opinions and activity seems to me like a Fura!Elim ploy, especially with so little player activity otherwise. It also strikes me as odd (although I may be unnecessarily extrapolating here) that the first elim kill was on a player that was doing ring analysis, and thus would be the best equipped to point out any misleading information that Fura hid into their posts (eg overestimating village defences to let our guard down, intentionally miscalculating or drawing wrong conclusions). However, Devotary is usually a solid analysis-based elim kill, so I’m not so sure about that. But I’m leaning a little elim on Fura. (If you could provide some more solid reads on everyone, this would do a little to convince me otherwise.) That’s all I really have time for, unfortunately - I thought I could do more, but work has unexpectedly reared its ugly head. I’ll be back, but not before rollover probably. I will try to place a vote when I’m more informed.

DISCUSSION SUMMARY: Guild Plans Guilds should make plans that they try to achieve throughout the era that might/would bring them into conflict with other guilds How open should guilds be with their plans/goals? Guilds should be announced and discussed in the chat pm/thread before a post goes up - this prevents dud guilds that have been created in the past. Membership How many guilds should each person be able to join? (Suggested numbers have ranged from one through to five, with some arguing there should be no limit.) Should there be different limits on number of great/normal guilds? Should you be required to join a guild? The idea was proposed that avatars have a maximum of (x) guilds they could affiliate (publically) with, and those characters could only be a member of those guilds (although they didn’t have to be members). This would serve to allow greater RP and variance within people’s characters while still having the benefits of the limit - it would require people announcing their affiliations publically and someone to keep track of it. Armies How big should guilds be before being able to have a city/army? Should there be a hard limit on future armies, with all troops being hired from existing sources? If an army is created, it’s buildup should be heavily advertised to allow for the disruption of the buildup. Leadership/characters The avatar/character separation also fits here. Should guild PMs be required to be in-character? Or should it be up to the guilds? Should the leaders of guilds have characters that are leaders? Should the positions of a character in the guild correspond to the positions of their avatars? Do the leaders of guilds need to be active? Greatness/Officiality Guilds that meet certain parameters (activity, have a goal, have 4/5/7+ members) qualify as ‘great guilds’ - not just the big three. Guilds can move between normal and great status. This allows guilds to try and achieve ‘greatness’ status. Should great guilds be allowed to muster a greater (heh) amount of forces? There should be a codified list of all Great Guilds so newcomers don’t get lost down the rabbit hole of old, defunct guilds. Errata Should guild spying (which would be primarily between Great Guilds) be allowed? Both OOC and as RP. I’ve likely missed things, so let me know and I’ll update the list.

Ark is aware of this, but I’m currently planning a way to break Voidus out. That theoretically could work in conjunction to the fever (the disease motivating Chartreuse to actually break Voidus out to find a solution) and could trigger a guild conflict and thus the guild reform ideas that have been developing. Of course, that would require guilds to get behind trying to stop the team (@TUBA).

That sort of thing is what we’re trying to avoid by implementing a guild limit: just joining a guild to bump up its numbers without actually caring about it and devoting time to it. If you really want to be a Liebrarian, then you should properly join and devote time to it: otherwise you’d run out of space for guilds you actually care about it.

I have no problem with people breaking ‘laws’. These rules are more designed to make guilds more effective as a form of RP. They aren’t really limits on what the characters can do, but rather what their avatars can do. (Much like how spamming doesn’t affect the characters but affects the avatars.) As long as we strive to keep on one side of that line, I think that we’ll be on the same page. (The other note is that nothing should prevent criminals from being punished - in that way, someone can commit arson in the Citadel. It just won’t end well for them.) And I think Fura’s response is quite a reasonable one. Many (most) of our guilds never got off the ground or had a major impact in the RP. These rules are designed to make guilds more active and forge stronger relationships between their members and the system. Later, I’ll edit in a summary of what everyone has said so far, and what rules we have basically agreed we should implement.

That’s a fair assessment. We’re only trying to improve how guilds function, and not limit the creative space that there is to be explored. Although I do disagree with you on how much the proposed ideas would limit people (I do, for example, believe that there are too many NPC armies currently, and there would be nothing preventing new guilds from hiring mercenaries like the Sentinels), it is something to be aware of. And we’re not necessarily trying to make guilds more/less organised - just that we’re trying to make them more involved in the Alleyverse and goal-oriented. It achieves the same purpose no matter how they go about it. In terms of rules, I think this is just something we fundamentally disagree on. In my eyes, we’re not preventing chaos - we’re just trying to make more effective chaos. Improving the state of guilds opens up realms of possibilities in guild wars (both intra and inter) and politics, faction instability, etc. I think those are excellent requirements; especially the city idea. Maybe we could have the citadel being the result of becoming a great guild (a privilege granted by their activity and numbers). I’d probably decrease the number of members to five, though, to make it less difficult for guilds to achieve that status. Corollary: whether or not you have an army should not depend on your guild status. In fact, the way I’d do it is that I’d probably put a hard limit on large armies (small militant groups are fine) going forwards. If troops are needed to achieve that guilds’ mission, then they can be hired. This works both to decrease power level and increase RP opportunity, and given the number of existing armies shouldn’t hinder new guilds too much.

I think you're misinterpreting a lot of what we're trying to do, and you've failed to respond to some of our rebuttals. I agree with you on this one. Spying should continue to exist, but I think we need to build up the guild framework more to allow this to be more pertinent. As it stands not a lot of guilds are doing much of anything. Yes, it depends on the guilds. But I would encourage most to at least try it, even if they decide to change back. Rejecting it out of hand would be somewhat closed-minded. I outlined a while back why I think affiliation limits (I wouldn't call it membership limits, that could be misconstrued) would improve the RP as a whole. Could you respond to those ideas before rejecting the proposal? The problem is that smaller guilds are waltzing in and making massive armies (ahem). We already have massive armies - see any of the big three, the forces in SDW and the Great Game, GUESS, and the Sentinels. You shouldn't need to make more - I've said repeatedly that hiring people would actually be a lot more fun and sets up some RP. Yes, you can have smaller guilds have a small number of NPC's to fill out the numbers. I don't think anyone would object to that. But these restrictions exist because we're trying to prevent Disingenuous-Size-Syndrome, and decrease power level. In addition, I've seen a number of guilds that were poorly thought out and subsequently floundered because nobody joined. Remember, every significant guild today started with only one member. You shouldn't need a powerful army to keep it going if the idea is good enough. (The Thieve's Guild is an excellent example of this.) I think you severely misunderstand how leadership works. There is such a thing as 'handing over a position', even if it is temporary. I'm not even sure this already happens - I think Storm is still in charge of TUBA. Correct me if I'm wrong, though. Also, Voidus is correct. That would be an amazing character arc. You're trying to paint a bogeyman out of rules. Give me a second to compile my thoughts on this. Modern historians agree that Era 1 began with the creation of rules. Specifically, the Rules for Combat, which outlined how combat works in the Alleyverse. This was in response to a major duel between two OP characters which ended up dissolving into an unfun mess. Why? Because there was no structure. No framework to create effective, enjoyable stories out of an emergent narrative. Now that the combat rules are in place, it holds a special place in the history of the Alleyverse and remains one of our most-used assets. Did it limit our enjoyment? No. It enhanced it. Similarly, we have identified a problem: the way guilds work currently has broken. It worked during Era 1, but it didn't during Era 2. We're trying to find out why. If we don't, it's very likely that they will break even further. We implement rules so that we can structure our narrative, and thus allow us to have more fun. Yes, if you disagree with individual points, then I invite you to rebut why, and offer alternative solutions. But we're doing this not because we want to 'subracact [sic] enjoyment', but because we want to solve the problems that unstructured chaos has created. Yes, our god is a slowbro. That doesn't mean that he can solve every problem because he wants to, and dictate the actions of every single character. There are rules. The rules, and the narrative we create in those rules, are what make it fun. Limitations > powers.

They are connected - if someone suspects someone, they can just say that they suspect their character. Even if guilds don’t shift towards in-character RP (I’ve thought a little more on this and I’d say that guilds could probably shift to this, with planning and jokes being in quote boxes) you could still play it as the discussion in the guild PM just being a representation of the in-character discussions.

The possible problem with this is that I can see the big three just become the only ‘great guilds’ and the others being stuck at normal. If that’s what you intend, I disagree; I’d love to see more guilds become major players in the RP. This also means that characters can’t be in multiple of the big three, like Tena’s GB/TUBA combo. If spying continues (if that happens I would like to see that in-character as it adds a dimension beyond people just learning about subterfuge) then this would make it basically impossible. But if we made it explicit that normal guilds can become great and remove the restriction on “multiple great guilds”, I support this. It’s probably how power would develop anyway in a city-state anyway - multiple large factions struggle while smaller ones just try to get by. You could see guilds trying to achieve greatness over an entire era instead of being able to just magic up their own army and resources.

Is there a specific reason you are against it? Could you explain your thoughts a little more clearly? There are several ideas in that post - are you disagreeing with all of them?