Players taking control of King's Council?

[Hoffs]

So it seems that Mesanna is going to be appointing a dedicated Siege EM once again to replace Bennu. But we don't know when that will be, how competent they will turn out and how long they will last. Furthermore, any new EM will presumably just return to the regular King's Council meeting format of the governors and Blackthorn. And for the time being the shard would have to carry on without any King's Council meeting. But one alternative is for Siege players to take over the running of a King's Council themselves. That way we could mould the Council into exactly what we want and providing we had a core group of people who would ensure that the meetings take place and are run properly, we would be independent of any EM and not have to rely on them. If we do have an EM then he can attend the meetings on Blackthorn and do pretty much what he did before.

A King's Council run by the players would allow us to expand it to other Siege communities such as representatives of player towns, non-Fel towns such as Ter Mur, Zento & Luna, and groups like the Savages. And as most Siege RPers seem to take a dim view of British/Blackthorn and their authority, there would also be the possibility of the Council electing its own King/Queen(s) of Siege (or whatever we wanted to call it). Such a king would of course have no real authority over anyone, but it would bring up intriguing roleplay possibilities with the king possibly issuing edicts which may be followed or laughed at by others. The Council could also raise funds to purchase two name change tokens per term, one so that the incoming king could change his name and the other for the outgoing one to change his back to normal. And finally, the Council could be used for non-RP things such as discussing problems on Siege with regard to new publishes, etc.

On the flip side to all this though is the worry that it may not work. Firstly there are only so many people that are interested in KC meetings regardless of who is running them. They are essentially just RP events and there is little of that left on Siege or UO these days. It can be difficult enough to find candidates for the regular governorships (nobody entered for Jhelom this term), so where will the elected representatives of Zento, Umbra, etc come from? There are a lot of new faces on Siege at the moment, but how many are the sort that will attend the KC? Not many appear to be ones that would. Just look at how many newcomers attend the monthly auctions - it is essentially just the veterans who show up even though you can buy some good stuff at fairly low prices. And then we are assuming that all people who are interested in this are going to reach agreement on everything and we are not going to have major differences of opinions on how things should operate. So a lot of work may be put into this for nothing. Do we want to bother?

So what are people's thoughts on this? And who would support such an enterprise by Siege players?

[Freja]

First, drop the idea about a king, it do not make sense if we want the shard to work together.
A Council is ok but it could have a inner circle of 3-5 leaders. Not sure if Council is the right word

It is a RP game with both good and evil, that mean Brigands, Outlaws, Pirates, Vampires, Undead, Orcs,  Elves, Gargyles, etc may be a part of it. I can't see how it could work with 1 King.

Many PK/PvP guilds can/will not accept a King but may agree to choose a Dread Lord, Dread Captain or something to be a part of an inner circle of the council.

We need some brainstorming for how this can work for all. It's easy for the "good" guilds to accept a king but for many of the "evil" guilds, it will go against their RP.

I really would love to see the fun evil guilds back, who did not love interact with ORC in the past?

[Blind Otto]

The idea of self-governance is a fine one.
However, we would need to manage it very carefully, because I can immediately see a conflict/confusion if and when we do get a full-time EM.
Yes, I am the eternal optimist. Let's assume that we will, one day, get a new EM.
Let's go one step further and imagine that they're an amazing EM.

On the one hand, I would imagine that the potential EM would have to comply with "The Rules", whatever those may be.
If those rules dictate that the EM has to roleplay as Blackthorn, we immediately have a conflict.
If the EM is willing to take our roleplay and structures into account, that could be fun, and could potentially make the EM's life easier.
After all, he/she would be presented with an existing foundation on which to build many events.

On the other hand, we'd immediately have yet another conflict within the community.
There would be those who would support the council (or whatever we call it), and those who would support the king.
Again, that could be the potential for some good roleplay - but there are those in our community who simply do not/will not understand roleplay.

I'm not saying sit back and do nothing.
What I am doing is repeating what I've said from the start - take this carefully, slowly, and in small, manageable steps.

As far as the King/No King matter goes, we are in a game based on a medieval world, with a rich history of royalty.
By all means, have groups opposing the king. KSS was opposed to Lord British since day one - but that was part of their RP.
With a king to rail against, you have the potential for story lines.
If Kelmo is willing to be king, I say, let him be king. How everyone reacts to that, is up to them.

How the EM will react to that - or be allowed to react to that - we'll just have to wait and see.

[Zardoz of Crete aka Kimi aka Victoria Secret]

I like the fact that Kelmo step up to take this role of King.   Down with the traitor Blackthorn.  Long Live King Kelmo!  To me this is a great role play idea and I hope (if there is a new EM) the new EM sees this for what it is and rolls along.  Can you see the events?  Kelmo gets arrested, jailed, sentenced, his loyal retainers rush to rescue him, only to be met by those loyal to Blackthorn?  A hard fight but Kelmo is rescued at the last moment, only to be branded along with all that helped him traitors to the crown of Blackthorn.  Two separated clans, both claiming they are the forces of Good the other is Evil.  Then there is another factor, the bandits.  Not loyal to either side.  Only there to fight!

[kelmo]

I am game. Let's have some fun with this.

[Leprechaun]

His Royal Majesty King Kelmo I
That has a nice sound to it.

Humm... Leprechaun Lord High Treasurer, His Majesty's Exchequer and keeper of the royal purse

That has a nice sound to it also
Kind of like gold coins clinking against each other.
** Shivers just thinking about it **

[Hoffs]

I don't quite see what the problem is with there being a king. Again, it does not have to be a king - Kahn, Overlord, consul, etc could also be chosen instead and to avoid a conflict with the Britannian King Blackthorn. Perhaps Emperor, a title with generally sinister connotations and which indicates that they outrank Blackthorn. It is not as though the king would have any tangible power like an EM or dev would so there would be no reason for anyone to try and force someone in to somehow "control the shard". He would just be an elected figurehead, possibly given the power to make proclamations and edicts. If he was a "good" king then the evil RPers would probably refuse to follow many of them which would create interesting conflict. Similarly if an "evil" king was elected - the "good" would not be happy. Or maybe someone is elected who chooses to go "mad" and RP some deranged monarch who wants to appoint his pet ki-rin to the King's Council in the style of Caligula. Or maybe you just end up with a "sweetie" queen like Tanager who just wants to bake cookies for everyone. *shrugs*

But as I see it, the best way to elect the king would be for anyone on the shard to nominate themselves to the post but it is the Council themselves who would vote. If the Council was made up of around fifteen people of various types there would be no certainty at all of who they would choose if there were several reasonable candidates. Maybe one candidate might furtively offer bribes to certain Council members in order to secure their vote. From a personal point of view, if I was one of the Council members I would be inclined to vote for the person who I thought would do the best job from a RP point of view, not the person who most closely fit my personal ethics, because, as I said, the actions of the king are not going to stop me doing things in any meaningful way. And also, the king would be an elected position, probably tied to the same term as the governors. So it is not as though he would be a permanent feature (unless he got himself re-elected, if it were allowed).

Furthermore, the Council would be made up of representatives of the people of Siege. The nine elected governors to begin with, the player-run towns (Gilfane and Safe Haven), RP groups like the Savages probably, and then elected officials of the other towns if there is a will from those people to elect a leader. You want more evil members? Well fine, but they would need to actually exist and then show themselves to be cohesive unit. You want more player towns? Great, so do I. Problem is there aren't any others at the moment. But of we create an initial Council and then rough guidelines on how new groups would be able to join the Council, the Council themselves would then vote to bring these potential newcomers in if they felt they were worthy.

[kelmo]

I particularly like your thoughts on Council membership.

[kelmo]

I will go through my journals and create a talking point agenda moving forward. Great ideas here and in the meetings. I look forward to moving ahead and helping make things happen. See ya at the next town hall.

[Hoffs]

Many PK/PvP guilds can/will not accept a King but may agree to choose a Dread Lord, Dread Captain or something to be a part of an inner circle of the council.

"Real" evil people would be unlikely to call themselves "dread lord" or "dread captain". They may call themselves lord or captain, but it is the population at large, or merely historians, who would give them the dread label.

[Hoffs]

I will go through my journals and create a talking point agenda moving forward. Great ideas here and in the meetings. I look forward to moving ahead and helping make things happen. See ya at the next town hall.

A little more notice would help the next time there is one. I didn't find out about the first until half an hour before the start. And I didn't know about the second until a couple of hours after it ended.

[Freja]

"Real" evil people would be unlikely to call themselves "dread lord" or "dread captain". They may call themselves lord or captain, but it is the population at large, or merely historians, who would give them the dread label.
[/quote]

Maybe but what I wanted to say is, it is important they are a part of this council too. An evil guild, busy, trying to take part in this and trying to make events too will add much more to Siege than an evil guild, who feel they are treated as scum and not invited to be a part of it.

At the first meeting, we was speaking about each "governor", lets call it sub community, will try to make at least one event a year (half year?), limited only by imagination, I could see a lot different kind of events, some poor good and safe, others more evil or PvP minded.

If we can get this to work, Siege will get something unique, no other shard can offer new and returning players.

I also believe it will bring RP back on Siege as all will try to add something unique for their little part of the community.

[Hoffs]

Unfortunately I was not at yesterday's meeting because I had no idea it was taking place. But as I have said, I think any group should be eligible to be part of the Council if they are a recognized force on Siege either through a town, an ethnic group or some other common link.

The events would be nice although that seems to be something easier said than done as many people would have no desire to run something like that. Also, the Council members are not all going to be fixed. The regular governors are re-elected every six months. But anyway, I think we must not get too far ahead of ourselves yet. Talking and coming up with ideas is easy, implementing those is more difficult. As I see it, everything starts with the King's Council. As most people seem agreeable that it would be good for Siege to run its own expanded Council in some form or other then we probably should begin by focusing on more of the details with that.

[Freja]

I know that.

You say, "as many people would have no desire to run something like that"

Here it is I say, "limited only by imagination". An event do not need to be something big, that take a lot of hours to set up, it can be way more simple, like make the best backpack event, where you build a scenery in a backpack and then choose a Winner. Or you can make a hunter event, kill the biggest bear found around Cove or make a naked murderer run from Trinsic to Britain, they may only follow the road and only move when alive. If they die, they get ressed and move on from their body. Vinner is the one who get first to Brit bank.

If a governor / Mayor /Captain / Lord etc choose a date for his community to make an event, I'm sure most can make it.

We will need a co-ordinator like Kelmo to follow up and help them remember dato and get needed info in the event calender.

I have learned, if you trust people and believe they can do it, they will do it. If you show them dis trust, they will give up, as they feel you expect them to fail. Naybe they just need help with some good ideas.

You say "The regular governors are re-elected every six months."

I think it may be a good thing if the Co-ordinator do follow up with the other Communities, to see if they still have same "Governor" or it is time for them to choose a new one.

I look forward to see Kelmo's report from second meeting as I could not make it to that.

[Blind Otto]

As far as the re-election of governors go, right now, we have a problem.
There is a great deal of apathy. It is more a case of "who is prepared to do the job" rather than "real" politics.
That's understandable, because the game mechanics do not give the governors much power at all.
So, what you are actually voting for, in terms of pure game mechanics, is who gets to press the button to choose a trade deal.

If we can get a new system working decently, I believe we will see that change.
People will actually want to vote for the person or person who threw the best events, who did the most for the shard.

Of course, that still leaves the question of who will be arranging the events.
For someone with a lot of available time, few commitments, creativity, and available resources (items, guildmates, friends), that's not a problem.
But, such people are rare.
If they weren't, there would be a queue of people applying to be EMs - and we all know that queue does not exist.

I believe that we have a lot of "ideas" people. That's fine. Get a suggestion box in place.
When anyone feels they would like to arrange an event, have a rummage through the box, and pick something.
Where we will have a shortage will be those people who feel they'd like to do an event.

It would also help if we had details of how to contact the EM or the Community liaison, Player Co-ordinator, or whatever they're called this week - and what those people are willing and able to do for us. No, events should not depend on those people - but knowing every resource available to us, and how to get hold of it, would be a great help.

A forum has been suggested - things like that need to be sticky posts in it!
Also, perhaps, something like "a guide to arranging your first event" might encourage other people to put a toe into the water.