Shattered Kingdoms

The first leader chooses the second one in tribunals. Once the Druid becomes leader, he'll get another Druid inside or something, and make him his second.

Care to counter my argument with something I can't destroy it in 2 sentences now?

DA, your arguments don't destroy anything. They display what I hope is deliberate ignorance on your part, the reason for which I can only guess at.

Your line of reasoning is riddled with holes that I'm not going to bother going into because I think it will take the thread off-topic. I'm also going to ignore your transparent attempts to get me to flame you. If you really want to discuss your argument further, make a new thread.

Step 1. Let people have membership in a cabal and a tribunal at the same time.
Step 2. Allow a character gifted enough to receive invitations to lead two organisations the ability to accept those offers.

That's all you need, Dulrik! Even people who aren't all for it are saying to give it a go

I'm sorry but you obviously can't counter my arguments and decide to take the "lawyer" way out.

Apart from that, my opinion is still there. Tribunal leaders imo, being important members and leaders of armies and kingdoms, shouldn't be part of any other cabal. Because of possible conflicts of interest as I've shown with the examples earlier. And because tribunal leaders have more power in SK than other chars(ability to deport, banish, immigrate etc - pretty much control what's going on in their kingdoms).

And my opinion has place in this topic as much as your opinion does Jardek.

PS: My arguments certainly destroy many things, if you counter arguments can make things go "Boom".

Please no. Tribunals and cabals are supposed to be player-directed. Immortals should not be interfering with group politics unless PC or NPC roleplay forces them to do so. If we're going to take the no-limitation route, then let's take it.

I agree that Druid control of CoN is never going to happen. Yet I do expect to see more reasonable combinations. Hammer or Fist control of Ayamao could well occur, for example.

How bad is that? I expect such things will change tribunal RP, but let's admit any dual-membership proposal is going to do that. I'd be more concerned about balance. The Fist and Hammer could well end up jointly controlling three of the four tribunals, if the Guardian/Talon leaders are lighties when the change hits.

For that reason, if we do go through with this, I believe changing the MC to a tribunal must also be done. That leaves room for a new dark-centered cabal, which has merit anyway. (No, the split-off group shouldn't just be a cabal version of the Empire's legions. Different groups must have different goals if their split is to make RP sense.)

We would also likely need to rebalance cabal powers. I don't see any tribunal willingly accepting Harlequins, for instance. That's one motive for lots of OOC rules, to keep tribunals from discriminating like this. I'd just rather have balance handled by mechanics instead of OOCness.



I confess I have mixed feelings. I still don't like dual membership in general, essentially for Salak's reasons. Yet at the same time, I agree that tribunals could use a little kick in the seat, as well as more members. If I can think of another way to do that, I'll let you know.

Wow, take a weekend off and this thread blows up again. As much as Jardek and Tat want simple Dual Membership, there are TONS of problems with it. In fact the "summary" I did on page 58 or 59 was not my original suggestion. That was the evolution of recognizing certain issues as they came up and finding some kind of synergistic solution.

Now to the point at hand. DA is absolutely correct in his statements about one organization being destroyed by another under Dual Leadership. I'm not going to say it will always be a cabal dominating a tribunal, because I believe a creative and effective tribunal leader could dominate a cabal. But the point still stands, one organization becomes -no more then an extention- of the other. Two leadership flags has no effect.

Although, it doesn't even take someone being a leader of both for this -effective merger- to happen. Assume the leader of the peacekeepers joins the Hammer. Well then the leader of the Hammer has effective control of the peacekeepers through that member.

Any reasonable person can see that leaders are compromised if they must take orders from another. It should be just as obvious that the organizational integrity of any cabal/tribunal is undermined when its leader is pulled in different directions by higher leaders or conflicting duties. I fully understand the achievement draw to lead more then one organization. But ultimately, that is a recipe for failure.


Lei Kung

DA you fail to see that your example uses modern countries and warfare. The US has much more advanced weapons. SK is a swords and sorcery, taking away the sorcery, we has swords. If you think back to a time when only swords, and maybe a little bit with rifles, were around, unhappy citizens could be extremely dangerous to the ruling class of a nation.

Oh for the love of pete. The example was fine for what it was meant to point out. Just because there is a difference doesn't mean the point is not valid. For all intents and purposes the example stands for what it is meant to show.

Lei Kung

Not really if he is comparing two dissimilar things.

Let's not get into a debate about the US and contemporary warfare.

Instead, let's compare the problems of the two suppositions.

Firstly, I disagree with a lot of Lei's long post, like, several entire sections of it. Instead of nitpicking, I'm going to compare only the dual membership/leadership aspect.

You can be leader of both
1. Tribunal/cabal might or might not receive inferior role to the other tribunal/cabal.

You cannot be the leader of both, perhaps not even a member of another cabal/tribunal if you're the leader of one
1. Players are punished for being gifted
2. Players are punished for showing initiative
3. You are told flat out "you can't do that" no matter how good your RP is
4. The most skilled and arguably best-suited players for leadership are never, ever going to be leaders again when given the choice of leadership or membership in two organisations.

I still disagree flat out with your 'problem' with dual leadership anyway. Most of the time it's not going to be about whether a cabal or a tribunal is closer to a character's heart. People don't work like that, for the most part, because they're too busy thinking about themselves. Instead of a cabal/tribunal being nothing but a poor shadow of the other, it'll be both organisations being equal but different (by necessity of their function, as I said, and the different kinds of players they each attract) instruments of the leader's will.

I appreciate that you've gone through this thread, LK, and I appreciate that you've gotten a lot of ideas from all over the place. My problem with it is that a lot of those ideas are bad. Not mediocre. Bad. Not many people want this big complicated thing that looks like a piece of legislation. It looks to me like they want something simple. So let's give them something simple. If it needs tweaking, or if some of the other ideas would be good additions, then let the immstaff tweak and add away after that.

"Might" is a poor word to base any logic on. I'd like to also point out that leadership in general is an incredible stress on the player (so I've heard). Would any of the current leaders really like to double the amount of leadership type work that they put into SK? I'm guessing more than often, no. But, if you put this into the game, it WILL be another bar to reach, and, if the past has shown us anything about human nature, if the goal is there, we will reach it again and again. I'm not saying it will happen, but it is possible quite a few people to go through the stages of dual leadership. Now, if there's just one that doesn't have the time and effort to put in twice as much grind work to make leading a cabal and a tribunal at the same time, then ultimately, one, the other, or both of the organizations will be lessened in some form or another. In other words, unless you -believe- that half of the current leaders in this game can handle another hopefully separate organization (as far as RP goes), then yes, go ahead and vote for dual leadership.
Just in reference to your "points" 1-3, let's take something that we aren't allowed to do. Train level 51. It has to be gained by those who RP a lot (hence, are probably gifted players that show initiative). Their RP is never good enough to let them gain that extra level.

Plus, your 4th point is kind of moot. You are assuming that everybody will always think your way, and everybody's RP doesn't always fit the ideals of two organizations.

Finally, if you give the leaders something special (maybe a nice NPC for a trib leader and an extra power for a cabal leader or the other way around), then the extras should be such that it balances not being in both organizations, and it allows for a leader to do what they are meant to do: uphold the ideals of an organization.