Legate Favor Points

[Ziya]

As an abstraction of 'political capital', Legates should have favor points.

These favor points are needed to perform Legate actions, such as adding or removing titles, creating new titles, transferring dinars, or adding or removing laws, adding or lowering wages, etc. These favor points can only be spent on Legate actions, and have no bearing on things like loot, favor shop, etc. (save, perhaps, a favor shop where a Legate spends his favor point to buy Legal Papers from Ashbury).

These favor points abstract the political capital that a Legate has, and if a Legate lacks sufficient political capital, his actions are just bogged down by byzantine bureaucracy, reluctant scribes, or endless meetings and committee hearings.

Favor points are generated passively at a slow ticking rate, which encourages Legates to stay on and be active. Conducting Assemblies, rallies, debates, etc. would also lead to a substantial boost of favor points, which encourages Legates to actually do those and benefit from those. Finally, Voiced Citizens can give Legates a small amount of favor points once a week like faction officers, which abstract the support that a Legate is trying to garner by talking to and convincing Voiced Citizens to support his policies.

Legates who win elections would start with an enormous pool of favor points, say, 5,000 or 10,000, while Legates who become Legates because they were Prelates would not. This also properly abstracts how an elected Legate has more of a mandate than an unelected Legate.

Altogether:
+ Reduce frivolous Legate actions that just diminish the verisimilitude of the setting. A Legate that wants to add silly titles would have to diminish his favor points in so doing.
+ Give a greater impact to Legate actions, while encouraging Legates to discuss them, convince Voiced PCs to support these actions, etc.
+ Reduce the trend/phenomenon of Legates simply not conducting Assemblies or talking to the general player base before performing Legate actions.
+ Ensure that Legates have to remain politically engaged even outside of elections, since they will need a broad support base to get influxes of favor points.

[Walrus Warwagon]

I believe this is a phenomenal suggestion, and would serve greatly in improving political aspect of the server.

[Egon the Monkey]

It's an interesting way to abstract out the idea of NPC political capital, how there's a number of Voiced NPCs but it's the PC votes that decide elections. As you note, there's quite little reason for most Voiced PC to show up to an Assembly unless they have a case to pitch. You're showing up to a meeting where you have very little influence on the outcome. You don't get a vote, there's only 2 Legates, and if one says 'no' there is nobody left to convince.


I can see this incentivising the Three Hour Meeting From Hell, where a Legate decides to drag out an Assembly to 'farm Favour'.  So if this was scripted, I'd go as far as to suggest:

• Favour points should accrue only in the Well. You can only get them when people can find you.
• Once a week, a Legate can ring a bell to call an Assembly, so long as there are at least 10 PCs in the area. (like for triggering a Raid)
• The Legate gains X Favour a tick for 60 minutes, then loses X+2 favour a tick for the next 60 minutes. The favour ticks stop when the Legate hits the bell again to end the Assembly.
• This way, if you want to make a 'profit' out of hosting things you have to keep them short and interesting, and tell people to shut up and move along.
• If it's once a week and a Voiced PC can Laud A Legate For Favour once a week, that starts a nice cycle of people showing up to hand out Favour in exchange for influence.

[NeedForGreed]

Counterpoint: does this risk  making mechanics of what should be RP, and especially scripting time-based bonuses just make the entire thing more of a second job? It doesn't seem very fun to have to deal with in the background.

If a legate is inactive or silly, imo that should be left to the RP to deal with.

What fun does this add for anyone?

[Egon the Monkey]

What fun does this add for anyone?

The fun it adds is 'Making Legates have to interact with other PCs in order to get anything done'

The trouble with Legate positions is that the only thing they have to pay for (in support, resources etc) is Elections. Once elected, any action they want to do is free. Free actions are rubbish for political RP, because there's no question over 'can I do the free thing?' Yes, yes you can!  So the only RP they generate is 'the other legate undoing it for free', 'the other legate vetoing it for free', or 'whinging'.

Titles and wages might cost things from Ephia's Well's treasury but they are free for that legate to create. So it feels like the system is regularly either:

• Boringly deadlocked with two legates negating each other.
• Totally frictionless if both Legates agree on a plan.

There's no tension as to whether a Legate will be able to pull off any given action. During their term, nobody else has much real leverage. Then if you do pull off your change, it only takes one legate to keep it on the books forever by vetoing further change.

On reflection, there's an even simpler way something like this could be done. By limiting the supply of Legal Papers as a bottleneck on Legate actions. Then letting the Accorded Factions and the Leagues access one Legal Paper each a month somehow.

[NeedForGreed]

I'm just wary of "gamifying" and "workifying" what is roleplay.

If something like this is implemented, it shouldn't be restricted to Legates but should apply to Accord/faction leaders as well. If the concern is that leaders aren't interacting with PCs enough, Accord faction leaders have a far bigger impact (or lack of it) on the playerbase based on whether they are interacting with folks. Requirements "across the board" for leadership would make more sense and be more positive than just making the Legate role involve more RL work.

Creating titles, removing them, making laws, etc, might not inherently require PC interaction. But they do generate roleplay, fuel emotions and provoke reactions. To me, that's part of the fun of seeing what a Legate does. Even when there was a Legate who was inactive in their seat, it still generated some roleplay because it angered people In Character.

I'm all for encouraging PC leaders to interact with other PCs, but I don't think artificial gamified mechanics are the right answer. If the suggestion is taken, however, it should really be applied to all faction leaders.

To summarize: The leader(s) of a faction being inactive or not interacting with other PCs have a far bigger impact on far more people than whether someone messes around with titles on their own.

Ultimately, however: this is still a game, and people don't owe us their time. Yes, a certain amount of intractability is reasonable to expect. I've been in leadership positions on previous servers, actively, and also dealt with the struggle of inactive PC leaders. But it's incorrect IMO to focus it solely on the Legate position, and any actions should keep in mind the real players behind the PC.

[Egon the Monkey]

Right, I get that. And yet, we already have an artificially gamified system! It was built as a game, by volunteer game designers, and abstracts out things like 'NPC taxation'. That's fine, in service of making the game more fun, and nobody having to budget for street cleaning. However, because Legates or faction leaders have so much autonomy, the only way they're really going to fail is if the other Legate or an NPC faction leader vetoes their plan. That leads to less RP, and less uncertainty. RP is stronger and more meaningful when there's IC stakes to being 'in the room where it happens', otherwise most of it is just commentary.

I came back because the server was taking a really ambitious new direction from the anarchic setting of V5. It's more complex and more subtle with the PvP now, but I can feel a few places it's snagging. Like promotions. Someone who reaches a position of authority seems likely to stay there taking up an officer slot until their term expires (Legate) or they die (faction officer). In three months on the server I've not seen anyone other than Zoturu get demoted or fired, and he really had to work for it. Any issue where the Legates are split is an automatic deadlock. It lacks tension, because there's no cost to that veto. And on the other side, a Legate who is absent gifts their counterpart a free hand to do whatever they like.

Nobody's hands are ever tied by the fact other PCs don't want to back the plan or pay the cost. Except for Elections. Elections are great, because any League or Voiced PC gets 1-2 Properly Meaningful Decisions to make or sell, and it can be very uncertain who is going to win.  Whereas going to Assembly is 'go to a meeting to listen to other people making decisions' and let's be honest, I get enough long meetings at work. If I'm not influencing that decision, why do I need to be there, rather than doing backroom deals where I am getting a say?  A famous bit of advice from large political LARPS is 'If you're bored, call everyone an idiot, flip the table and storm out. Now the meeting is no longer boring and other people feel empowered to leave too'. Absent a table to flip, ways to keep meetings short are good.

War Supplies, for instance. War supplies are great for letting PCs have agency in raid launches, but they could be even better! Imagine if there were 3 piles to turn in War Supplies, each to support a different project. That would mean leadership PCs would be lobbying questing PCs to back their pet project. It would create interdependence, and the chance for a leader to fail if they can't persuade PCs to back the plan they want.

tl;dr: Nobody owes you their time, but a game is more interesting when you can't succeed without getting other players to join the fun train.  If you need other PCs to back you, more people have a stake in the politics game we've bought into by playing. If you can fail as a faction officer by coasting or pissing off PCs, it opens room at the top for new PCs to rise.

[Hierophant]

I do enjoy this idea but after reading through the other PoV feedback in the thread I have to agree that it's a step in the right direction and should apply to more than just Legates. On my one attempt at Legate, one of the things I wanted to do, or at least one of the things I envisioned was opening up more avenues for politically minded PCs to advance. I've noticed since launch that the pool of PCs who actually want to be Legate or work towards Legate has thinned out, and part of that I think is that even without 'gamified' systems, being a Legate seems really taxing and unrewarding. I started thinking that the reason why these avenues haven't opened up with more ease is because more often than not the barrier is the back and forth vetoing of proposals and ideas. Sometimes I think having two Legates is the biggest factor of the politics feeling stifled, and that either one Legate or at least three or four Legates would be better, but I think one is more realistic to strive for. The idea being that there would be one Legate and his cronies filling up government positions (or just unaligned Voiced, or even Voiced from other Leagues striking an accord).

At the very least, the very idea of Legates needing to curry favor from the Voiced, Leagues or not, is a great idea. Moreover, I think Legates having a pool of political power that is not endless would be a great idea as well, and that political power being received from the favors of those Voiced or associates.

+ from Assemblies, from public events, bread and games, etcetera. I also think it would be more fun for Legates to interact with! The reason being, at least in my opinion, is it would make being a Legate *less* taxing, not more taxing. That's contrary to what NFG was wary of, but I do think that would be the case. Less expectation that a Legate must be perfect and fulfill every demand, and more expectation that a Legate should just be doing what a leader in power wishing to stay in power should be doing. Representation, and a line up of administrators, cronies and government officials appointed by them that do the work for them. The tenures of Gloamingdaith, Moretti, Argyris and now Komemnos are great examples of Legates great at delegation and accruing these lackies. I would love to see more of that sort of leadership.

Thanks for making this post as well. The political system certainly needs more public commentary and feedback, and despite how much we engage with it, I don't think we as players do it enough or the thoughts slip away and we decide not to make it public. I love to see new ideas on it and honestly it deserves an umbrella post for feedback! The changes of late have been great additions and ironing out the kinks of it would do a lot of good over time, of which it already has.