House of Nobles open discussion

Maelmoor wrote:Voting is an essential part of political RP

IMHO.. the main part of political RP is debate, stances and perspectives, when you get round to a vote you are closing a debate, if you bring up a point and its voted on at its start, its the end of the politics right there. my 10 cent on it

Maelmoor wrote:There is no need to create problematic scenarios when there are none to be found, I cannot remember any case when this was even a problem..it's like selling protection against earthquakes (if there was such!) in an area that never experienced them because it could potentially happen some day.

but in selling this "earthquake protection" we get cases where something is never allowed to take off, if someone was put into a Minister position then imho they should be free to act on there own mind, not be governed by the others in what they do with it.. if the people disapprove of there choices enough, well, refer to the "MINISTER IS BAD" part of Skarains post, its leads to that in the end anyway, people get some RP out of it, theirs nothing stopping a minister ICly abusing there power .. they can be questioned for it.. but thats IC, this is role play and it dos make scents these people would have the right to run there job as they see fit until they are deemed wrong and questioned

Edited : on reflection adding to this, what generates more RP, having votes on what is chosen by the Ministers when implementing changes or ideas to IF they can go though, or letting these ideas and choices be made and then having people react to them and stand against if they disapprove ? i put my belief that there is more possibility in the latter

Maelmoor wrote:cannot see how going back to something that was proven to not work as well would be an improvement

but this is not a step backwards, because the framework where presenting here was not a thing then, this is a direction turn that as far as im aware, the council has not had anything like this implemented before now into its workings so taking thoughts of what it was like for ministers to have unquestionable power in there area of work is kinda the wrong way to view it, because back then, they was the top people with no one to answer to in the circle of its workings , this is not the case here

You're definitely wrong in thinking this concept hasn't been tried on Defias Brotherhood before. Remember this server's been going for 11 years now. Everything has been tried before at this point.

Ministers have no power. Guild representatives rule the council, ministers can't approve their own proposals.

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:You're definitely wrong in thinking this concept hasn't been tried on Defias Brotherhood before. Remember this server's been going for 11 years now. Everything has been tried before at this point.

Ministers have no power. Guild representatives rule the council, ministers can't approve their own proposals.

I think this is something really important..

We know from real history that when you don't learn from mistakes in the past, you are bound to repeat them. People may disagree with my opinions but I do hope people know that I care a lot for Defias, the RP community here and if I see that people are to repeat mistakes then I would not serve the community unless I told about it. This is not cause people are mean or foolish, the idea might be great but they might not have the experience how it actually works out.

I know the consequences of playing out these mistakes, we have seen a lot of really good people leave due to them, people who I still have contact with and see as friends. People have tried to lure me to AD but this is my home and I love the people and community here. We survived before cause we had the numbers, now when we are a much smaller RP community such hits would give a big impact, in my mind split and drama within the RP community would be a tough blow to survive.

If people say "let us improve things by doing this" and it would be a new, fresh idea, you would think about pros and cons and if it sounds promising you could try it out. I work with "change" on a daily basis and I know that change is needed to improve and get better but you need change for the right reasons, you need the right information to make good decisions and "lessons learned" is a vital part in that.

I have been wrong and done lot of mistakes, so has the Council, we have tried a lot of different approaches, we have let "evil" take over and run Stormwind for quite some time (was an amazing event with the whole community involved), we have seen revolt, we have seen change and I have been so pleased with the recent changes. To involve and let the guilds and organizations play a major role is for sure the best change we ever done, I admit that I wasn't too sure about it but thanks to a lot of people we managed to find a good balance of things, much thanks to learning from the past.

I know there are people who are against the whole Minister concept but I really believe in it and I've seen so much RP come out of it that it cannot be bad, it adds depth to RP while still letting people do their thing and by give any sort of "power" to the community we have managed to control that risk element as well.

We have a very solid structure in place, one that involves the community, one that lets people new to RP get a chance and one that lets people grow, nothing will ever be perfect and we will together work for improvements but I think that is what we should focus on, creating more RP upon this foundation and involving more people into RP.

We should not repeat mistakes of the past, we should not cause split and drama, cause no one would benefit from that.

Alright so. What is the current system, stripped into it most basics?

Stormwind Council

Councillors, representatives of different guilds, who bring their guild's voice into the matters of the Kingdom and back the interests of their own guilds.

Ministers, who have a job at some area of expertise, be it Defense, Magic, Trade, Foreign Affairs, etc. They do not have the right to vote.
(What perks -is- there for being a Minister? Your job is to create RP, sure, but what do your character get from it in return?)

People bring subjects to the table. They are heard, potentially briefly discussed. Announcements are made. Sometimes, something is made vote for, such as ................................................. , and accepting a new organisation into the Council.

Anything I missed?

OOOOO a hornets nest *equips stick of +1 poking* the formatting for this will be awful but here's my thoughts i've noted down on this thread since it went up

Maelmoor wrote:I have some concerns myself, one is the "use" of the King in RP, in the Council we have avoided that as of experience it can end up in situations where the King is used as a tool in RP. Since the King would have the chairman seat in this House of Nobles one could argue that everything that is decided would be the Kings will or decision, thus making it impossible to even argue against or it could be seen as treason.

...soooo like the council does with stormwind law and other stuff that would have been set by the king then? whichever way you swing it that stuff honestly wouldn't be a council or minister thing to make a call on, kings land kings law.

Maelmoor wrote:This is not true, a Minister can work on his own and do plans and set them in motion, only when there is something major, such as law changes it needs to be voted about (which makes sense I think), then it is voted about by the Council, not Ministers.

ok so for this i will point toward my previous comment about the laws being a king thing before pointing out an example of this not being the case,   when the dwarves where asking for an embassy (which lore wise already exists by the way) you went ahead and dealt with that personally without any mention of it at the council and only deemed it important to mention it when asking people to pick a location (which seems kind of backwards in scale of importance and also like asking a person what colour glass the want to walk over rather than asking them if they want to walk over glass)

Maelmoor wrote:"The House of Nobles has the authority to elect Ministerial officials."

Doing in the Council as we do now ends up in an open voting, where everyone can attend and see what is happening, it results in involving people more and also can lead to RP, many times dicussions have continued in taverns and such afterwards, since the HoN has closed sessions this would be missed out. Council had closed session in it's early days but it only lead to excluding people and the stamp of "elitism".

The current format of the Council, where every order/organization based in Stormwind can apply for a seat is also good for the community as a whole, in many cases it's been an introduction to RP and I know many who met people and got involved this way.

With a small community as ours is there bandwidth for this? Could it lead to split and disagreements?

Last but not least, how to handle this ICly? Why would the Council agree to this?

the councils voting is about as open as fort knox is to lovely young men in balaclavas.   applications are taken on the forums, interviews at the closed council, decisions are made in private OOC chat   so the only real public rp is the emoted yay or nay after the fact.    (for those who didnt already know ministers and councilors have a private chat channel to discuss important things, like why their new graphics card does not work when plugged in incorrectly, yes you know who you are you naughty little paladin you)

on the closed sessions .....errrr it still does, both the closed sessions and the stamp of elitism

the current format of the council, in my time rping on this server has actually succeeded in driving more people away than bringing them in, myself almost included. it is the first place people are directed to when the come to the server where they are met with people discussing who should be allowed guard rights and what amendment should be made the the laws this week, if you want to market it to the fun happy social crowd the that stuff cant be present.

the small community thing seems to get played any time someone tries to add any meaningful RP outside the council  (anyone remember my ethics committee? the one i had almost a full set of casters eager to rp....that the community was too small for apparently)

dealing with it ICly is easy the house of nobles would have previously let the council do its own thing possibly due to lack of numbers or whatever and would now find reason to take interest again. as for why would they agree to this...lore wise that'd be pretty obvious so IC is simple, OOC honestly i don't think any of them would mind Maelmoor there is a reason the minister positions have such a high turn over

hutchins wrote:
Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:
Basically you should never under any circumstances assume the right to govern Stormwind, because essentially assuming the approval of the King to do a such thing way too easily amounts to powergaming.

The Council already pretty much does this as I have explained (partially at least) above. If your issue is truly regarding "Never assume the right to govern Stormwind" then you should also be arguing that the Council needs to be removed, or at least reformed drastically, as they are pretty much doing EXACTLY that. As another aside, the mere fact that the Council is held in the Keep, which is the home of the House of Wyrnn, it is to be presumed the Council has permission from the King to be there in the first place.

So, in short, if anyone wants to argue about "permission from the King" and "Governing Stormwind" being a no-no. Then please look at the Council and what it does for longer than five seconds and realise "If we have Ministers who control the Guards, the Laws, how Magic is run and all that. Then the players are governing how Stormwind works".

nail on the head there

Maelmoor wrote:"then the system i see is just madness and has enough room for power play that if anything this idea i present counters that off by simply giving you something to BE answerable.."

Could you state some examples please?

Also regarding boring meetings, the Council used to be closed in old days but by having public meeting we wanted to involve people and not make into some exclusive club, I totally understand and respect that political RP might be boring for some, that's why we have announcements in the first part, so people who are only there for that piece can listen in and then leave.

Finally the main purpose is really to create RP that tries to involve lot of people and guilds, given the fact we have less RP in these days because the community is smaller I think we should promote and encourage more RP, which is why I don't want to reject the idea of HoN, just that it could be done in a better way that would benefit everyone involved.

yes maelmoor by all means i'd love to field this one: Heldrik, the council stood there and let heldrik give the ninth company the ultimatum that to continue Rping as guards they had to get rid of mallicus   THEIR GM!


admittedly i lost interest after the circular logic going on after that...and then i saw this:

isirar wrote:You're definitely wrong in thinking this concept hasn't been tried on Defias Brotherhood before. Remember this server's been going for 11 years now. Everything has been tried before at this point.

Ministers have no power. Guild representatives rule the council, ministers can't approve their own proposals.

a whole eleven years, well its 2016 so let me just hop into my time ma....ooooh wait i dont have one because in all the time humanity has been around we still haven't tried anywhere near everything so err yeah calling bullshit there.
as for the ministers having no power like i said the minister of defense tried and in many ways (to my knowledge) succeeded in forcing a guild to pick between their GM and there RP. Furthermore maelmoor already said the ministers only have to propose things if they are "big"  and as maelmoor himself allowed an embassy to be opened in the city i think we can safely assume that "big" is open to interpretation

Phenoa Firehart wrote:yes maelmoor by all means i'd love to field this one: Heldrik, the council stood there and let heldrik give the ninth company the ultimatum that to continue Rping as guards they had to get rid of mallicus   THEIR GM!

It's "Mallicious", btw. But I don't mind

Just for the clarity: that was all IC (I hope). There are some who retcon bad scenarios, I tried to follow everything, which resulted in a rather bad position. But, one thing I can confirm: the arrogance of some IC was rather surprising.

my bad wasn't quite sure on the spelling but wanted to still bring the matter up because i protested quite heavily against it as it was happening, and sadly no the matter wasn't entirely IC which made the whole thing that much more annoying, i was on the delerium ts as all this was going on as well as talking about it in the councils channel in wow heldrik both ic and ooc clearly had a vendetta there and other members of the council either encouraged it or tried to justify it.
that aside my point was that that day the council went beyond "playing king" and started trying to play god by attempting to affect things outside of rp. and i say the council rather than 'a member of' because the council should have shut that situation down and told him he was out of line.

Thank you for your post, Phenoa. It was refreshing to get the opinion of a newer roleplayer into the discussion. I for one appreciate the time you spent writing your post.

Alright so. What is the current system, stripped into it most basics?

Stormwind Council

Councillors, representatives of different guilds, who bring their guild's voice into the matters of the Kingdom and back the interests of their own guilds.

Ministers, who have a job at some area of expertise, be it Defense, Magic, Trade, Foreign Affairs, etc. They do not have the right to vote.
(What perks -is- there for being a Minister? Your job is to create RP, sure, but what do your character get from it in return?)

People bring subjects to the table. They are heard, potentially briefly discussed. Announcements are made. Sometimes, something is made vote for, such as ................................................. , and accepting a new organisation into the Council.

Anything I missed

That I would say is a good summary, as for Ministers, if someone (speaking from an IC perspective now) has expertise in an area it would make sense to seek such a position, yes you create RP but you also take part of it which is a reward on it's own, it lets people play our their characters in a realistic and fun way while also making something good to others.

...soooo like the council does with stormwind law and other stuff that would have been set by the king then? whichever way you swing it that stuff honestly wouldn't be a council or minister thing to make a call on, kings land kings law

Since no one can RP such NPCs (thankfully) we have created our own framework, which is followed by the guilds and organizations part of the Council, it's a smart way to enhance RP without acting in a name that could provoke or disturb others.

ok so for this i will point toward my previous comment about the laws being a king thing before pointing out an example of this not being the case, when the dwarves where asking for an embassy (which lore wise already exists by the way) you went ahead and dealt with that personally without any mention of it at the council and only deemed it important to mention it when asking people to pick a location (which seems kind of backwards in scale of importance and also like asking a person what colour glass the want to walk over rather than asking them if they want to walk over glass)

The Stormwind Embassy Regulation was voted upon of course, so that was already handled as per procedure, it was a co-operation 3-4 years ago between the RP hubs of Stormwind, Darnassus, Ironforge and Exodar to give some depth and provide more RP and it fell out very well. There were lot of meetings and discussions around this that you have not seen, hence based on the snippet above it may seem it lacks background.

the councils voting is about as open as fort knox is to lovely young men in balaclavas. applications are taken on the forums, interviews at the closed council, decisions are made in private OOC chat so the only real public rp is the emoted yay or nay after the fact. (for those who didnt already know ministers and councilors have a private chat channel to discuss important things, like why their new graphics card does not work when plugged in incorrectly, yes you know who you are you naughty little paladin you)

on the closed sessions .....errrr it still does, both the closed sessions and the stamp of elitism

the current format of the council, in my time rping on this server has actually succeeded in driving more people away than bringing them in, myself almost included. it is the first place people are directed to when the come to the server where they are met with people discussing who should be allowed guard rights and what amendment should be made the the laws this week, if you want to market it to the fun happy social crowd the that stuff cant be present.

the small community thing seems to get played any time someone tries to add any meaningful RP outside the council (anyone remember my ethics committee? the one i had almost a full set of casters eager to rp....that the community was too small for apparently)

There is a mix of good points, irrelevant points and incorrect points here.

So the whole concept of making the community part of the Council, by having the guilds and organizations (to cover up for people without guilds but that may have RP organizations) is that they are part of every decision, of every debate. It is the guilds who decide who should represent them, it can be the same person every week or different ones. Right now I think all guilds based in Stormwind are part of the Council, which is great cause that gives us true transparency into the whole process. I do not recall we ever rejected a guild or organization from a seat at the Council, we even found ways for shady people to take part in a way that makes sense both ICly and OOCly.

I do not have any stats on hand but I'm very pleased with the amount of people who have in one way or another been involved, of all the RP that been created.

You mentioned your ethics committee, it had nothing to do with the Council but ICly people didn't agree to it, cannot see how that can be a blaming point?

yes maelmoor by all means i'd love to field this one: Heldrik, the council stood there and let heldrik give the ninth company the ultimatum that to continue Rping as guards they had to get rid of mallicus THEIR GM!


admittedly i lost interest after the circular logic going on after that...and then i saw this

We always try to keep things ICly and there were a lot of discussions and disagreements around this (all ICly), we also talked about the OOC aspect of not forcing someone into something but to my understand Aramal played along, please correct me if I am wrong here.

Bringing up the topic of councillors "voice" at the table as the top of the priority order I think you need to clear what that really means, because there only two of the councillors who really count as "voice of the people"  

Holy lightbringers- rep = maelmoor = represents.... Maelmoor as non others I see attend (rare I may see one)

Disciples of light = rep =valestrion represents..... Valestrion...  As his the only current member who takes involvement in the council

Blackwald trading union = mira = represents myself hutch and her self (I could argue one other but he's rarely able to attend)

The house of yore rep and ninth are the ONLY reps in my mind that really count as what your saying they are, because two of them rep no one other than ones opinion which is pretty defeating of the point and even my own guild is barely much better in claiming to be ether..  Two reps cover about 80% probably more of the voices which is my point

Now i understand that valestrions guild USED to have more involvement and lightbringers probably the same,  but it don't change the hard truth that 3 out of 5 reps currently speak for the smallest minority which proves that the ideals of people controlled council is not really what you have,  this just reinforces the point in my mind of why we need votes anyway,  there not balanced or equal to the same as one another in standing of who's voice is going heard anyway

My point is to not try and rip down on the idea of a "people controlled"  council,  but the point that with the current state of organization's (guilds) in the councils current involvement makes councillors voting the WORSE example of voices being equally valued, making councillors the worse way possible to accommodate for that line of thinking

Honestly,  I see skarains question of who should be a councillor in the first place and why not just have people who represent a group mind set just step forward to voice them self would not be more fitting considering the reality of what currently is happening

Azapha wrote:My point is to not try and rip down on the idea of a "people controlled" council

But you did.

Not sure if starting to attack guilds for being small is the right path to go, yes theres been a period where more people been away but we can see them return now to Legion, this is something I think we see across the realm, not just HLB.

If you start looking at the number of people based in Stormwind the percentage represented in the Council is still very high, House of Yore is the largest RP guild active in Stormwind, Ninth probably second. How many active roleplayers could there be on Alliance, 50? Say 30 are based in Stormwind, that is majority for sure who is tied to the Council through their guilds.

So the whole concept of letting the guilds and organizations play the major part is then wrong from your point of view? To involve more people and reduce "elitism" it is preferred to have a House of Nobles..which only nobles would be able to be part of? Sorry but you lost me along the road.

Skarain wrote:Thank you for your post, Phenoa. It was refreshing to get the opinion of a newer roleplayer into the discussion. I for one appreciate the time you spent writing your post. Smile

As much as I am not surprised this discussion is not supported by regular players (few use the forums), I am quite surprised it's only Maelmoor in defense here. Where is Valestrion's voice? Heldrik's? Neme's?

Maelmoor wrote:We always try to keep things ICly and there were a lot of discussions and disagreements around this (all ICly), we also talked about the OOC aspect of not forcing someone into something but to my understand Aramal played along, please correct me if I am wrong here.

Of course, I played along. I have always been the player who willingly choose to assimilate the Council as it was indeed the government of the Kingdom, both for the greater good and as I saw this unique to Defias Brotherhood, that you can have the law, that you can have the common agreement. I have already stated it in my TL:DR thread in this forum.

However, that was me. I can't imagine something like this to happen to someone new, someone with not that high understanding of things and affairs on this realm.

This all could have looked differently if Aramal was recognised as a guild leader (the second biggest group back then) even though he decided not to sit by the table on purpose. The event that lead to this happened purely because he wasn't sitting by the table.

As I said, I am a consequent roleplayer. The City of Stormwind showed to my main character, that he is neither wanted, nor respected as a guild leader/commandant/commander/noble/etc. (all IC?). The result: one devoted supporter of the Council out, one army guild nearly disbanded, one nice initiative to make nobles valid again now becoming Galakrond, and this is all, unfortunately, OOC.

Alright. So.
Of course my opinion is biased, since I am a minister of the Council, but I think even though it would lorewise make sense it would kill a lot of RP to switch from SW council to House of Nobles. Basically. It seems rather elitistic to have the Nobles run the city (even if it's right lorewise) and anyone can basically say "Oh I found papers, I am a Noble" and there is no reason why the House of Nobles wouldn't accept them in. Everyone's stories are as made up anyway.
Also, only humans (and maybe worgens) can be Nobles, so that would rule out elves, dwarves, gnomes, draenei and pandas from the Council. If I understood right they could work as Ministers (?), haven't really read every post in the discussion, but it still seems rather unfair, since they wouldn't have any power.
Also, if the Nobles ran the council there would be less of variation from guilds being represented. I really don't see a reason to change the system. We can always improve the old one if there is something that needs to be improved.

Rhena wrote:
Also, only humans (and maybe worgens) can be Nobles, so that would rule out elves, dwarves, gnomes, draenei and pandas from the Council. If I understood right they could work as Ministers (?), haven't really read every post in the discussion, but it still seems rather unfair, since they wouldn't have any power.

wikipedia wrote:
A noble is a member of the nobility.
[...]
Nobility is a social class, normally ranked immediately under royalty, that possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than most other classes in a society, membership thereof typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be largely honorary (e.g., precedence), and vary from country to country and era to era. Historically, membership in the nobility and the prerogatives thereof have been regulated or acknowledged by the monarch or government, thereby distinguishing it from other sectors of a nation's upper class wherein wealth, lifestyle or affiliation may be the salient markers of membership. Nonetheless, nobility per se has rarely constituted a closed caste; acquisition of sufficient power, wealth, military prowess or royal favour has, with varying frequency, enabled commoners to ascend into the nobility.
[...]
The term derives from Latin nobilitas, the abstract noun of the adjective nobilis ("well-known, famous, notable").

Anyone can become a noble. A prosperous merchant, a knight/dame, a war veteran. They either own some wealth or land or army. Their suzerain can give them part of his/her own land to manage, reward them with knighthood, etc.

It is obvious, that here a big role lies in bloodline, heritage, and family. I can't see reasons why Gnomes or other than human races couldn't have one. For example, Gnomes and Dwarves were fighting alongside Stormwind in many wars. Certainly some were given some honours for their service.

This is why in the House of Nobles I proposed only families that had at least two active roleplayers could represent the will of their House, for example. The Council kind of works the same way, as if a guild want's to get their seat at the table it must be known to all others and have some members there. So, it's semantics here.

There is no talk on switching the council,  rhena you need to read OP to understand what were on about as that is not the suggestion. Also moving on to skarains pitch suggestion allows for the idea of all wealthy types with titles beyond noble born being a possibility, as we're assuming the "something of nobles" in that case is more focused on a thing of people in the kingdom with enough wealth/land/investmentsto have influence on society by being able to fund or support projects that help city to prosper, making them more rich in the process

Azapha wrote:There is no talk on switching the council,  rhena you need to read OP to understand what were on about as that is not the suggestion. Also moving on to skarains pitch suggestion allows for the idea of all wealthy types with titles beyond noble born being a possibility,  as we're assuming the "something of nobles"  in that case is more focused on a thing of people in the kingdom with enough wealth/land/investmentsto have influence on society by being able to fund or support projects that help city to prosper,  making them more rich in the process

Replace the council, overtake the council, it's all the same.
So anyone who claims to have enough money could rule the city?

Mallucis wrote:

wikipedia wrote:
A noble is a member of the nobility.
[...]
Nobility is a social class, normally ranked immediately under royalty, that possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than most other classes in a society, membership thereof typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be largely honorary (e.g., precedence), and vary from country to country and era to era. Historically, membership in the nobility and the prerogatives thereof have been regulated or acknowledged by the monarch or government, thereby distinguishing it from other sectors of a nation's upper class wherein wealth, lifestyle or affiliation may be the salient markers of membership. Nonetheless, nobility per se has rarely constituted a closed caste; acquisition of sufficient power, wealth, military prowess or royal favour has, with varying frequency, enabled commoners to ascend into the nobility.
[...]
The term derives from Latin nobilitas, the abstract noun of the adjective nobilis ("well-known, famous, notable").

Anyone can become a noble. A prosperous merchant, a knight/dame, a war veteran. They either own some wealth or land or army. Their suzerain can give them part of his/her own land to manage, reward them with knighthood, etc.

It is obvious, that here a big role lies in bloodline, heritage, and family. I can't see reasons why Gnomes or other than human races couldn't have one.

This is why in the House of Nobles I proposed only families that has at least two active roleplayers could represent the will of their House, for example.

The logic there is sound, obviously, although the thing to consider when comparing it to IRL things is that IRL we don't exactly have Elves and Draenei wondering about.

And the House of Nobles itself is a very core thing to Stormwind and the Kingdom, so obviously it'd be primarily Human and they would be the most welcome, extending this to the Worgen because, well, they were(mostly) former Humans of Gilneas and obviously would be familiar to how things work, while their land is in contested Gilneas a lot of them moved to Stormwind and I suppose would want their Nobility to be respected. Going from above of how they would be familiar with things, I suppose that is why they'd have an easier time of joining the Stormwind House of Nobles as long as they have set themselves back up on a stable footing financially.

Now Dwarves also have Nobility, not in the same way or treatment as Stormwind I don't believe but it could be similar on some core levels. So if a Dwarf lived in Stormwind and managed to be granted Nobility, I could see them applying yes but they'd need to have solid grounding in the Kingdom of Stormwind for it to really be logical for them to join up. Night Elves would also follow this logic, though they kinda frown upon their Nobility due to issues in the past (Highborne are jerks). High Elves can follow the same patterns as Dwarves I should think.

Gnomes, I don't know much about them to be completely honest but I do know they have not had Kings, Queens or Nobility for quite some time(if ever) as the "High Tinkerer" position is actually something you're voted into. So the concept of Nobility might be quite alien to them as their version of "Nobility" would be the most creative and respected craftsmen and engineers, rather than someone born with the silver spoon so to speak.

Draenei again don't have any Nobility, their version of "Nobility" is kind of akin to the Gnomes in that it's how much respect you get. I think WoD did a lot to show how their politics works with the Exarchs, they don't have Nobles or Noble Houses but people that are greatly respected and trusted to make wise choices. So again, the concept would be quite alien to them.

Pandaren... Well, I guess they HAD Nobility at one point, Emperor and Empire and all that nonsense. So I guess the concept wouldn't be TOO far-fetched to them, although their society seems to have shifted to favour putting the Eldest, Wisest and/or most respected teachers in charge of things. So for the Pandaren I'm not too sure, lean toward the same as with the Gnomes and Draenei but it's not as simple with the gluttonous buggers.

Although this is REALLY off the current topic I think to discuss. Moving on...

Rhena wrote:
Replace the council, overtake the council, it's all the same.
So anyone who claims to have enough money could rule the city?

Wouldn't say rule the city, watching the Ministers and ensuring they are doing a good job (basically getting no complaints) is more that. If anyone would "rule the city" it'd be the Ministers themselves unless they smeg up royally.

Although if you want to go along the lines of "ruling the city" then the Council could be said to be doing exactly that right now anyway, all you need is a guild and to be voted on. Then bang, you suddenly have a vote in how the city does its laws, who are the guards, who we trade with etc etc.

My 2 coppers after following this (long!) thread:

I don't think the "House of Nobles" itself should be an RP organization, full stop.

Reasoning is simple - the HoN is, according to lore, chaired by the King and sets out the laws (important) for the City of Stormwind.   I do not believe that any group of RPer should be able to do this.   Why?   No RPer should be able to tell me what I can and can't do.  

No matter how you slice it (silly example to prove a point) if the HoN passes a law which says all male dwarves must wear pink tutus on a Wednesday, I'm not going to take a blind bit of notice of that law (because I wear mine on a Tuesday and it will be in the wash on Wednesdays).

Additionally, I don't turn up to Council Meetings or HoN meetings or half the political meetings which happen on this server.  If I did not read this forum I'd be 90% unaware of the politics of the realm so it's ridiculous to expect me to obey laws passed in such an organization which I could be utterly unaware of.  

You should not need to be up to speed with the politics of the realm to be able to RP in the realm without some guard saying, "Oi!  Dwarf!  Where's your pink tutu?!  You're nicked!"

Fenodyree wrote:I don't think the "House of Nobles" itself should be an RP organization, full stop.

i think we have moved on from this point.. as i said, Skarain posted a fairly good variant Idea that swayed that direction (gathering of nobles, meaning we can tear away the king crap ), and the laws ICly written by the council only really apply if you accept that RP, finally, no one so far has tried to make dumb laws in such a way as to make it so we have people being questoined over dumb shizzle

Maelmoor wrote:Not sure if starting to attack guilds for being small is the right path to go, yes theres been a period where more people been away but we can see them return now to Legion, this is something I think we see across the realm, not just HLB.

its not an attack,. i point out my own guild as part of that thing as well as you may of noted.. i am pointing out however that the Councillor system dos not really come down to "voice of the people" because of my said reasons, which debunks the idea of WHY you like it in place like that, because it dos not achive that when the majority of votes rep the minority, that was my point

and my answer to the realm being lower right now, well, i know a lot of people who are still on at the council times but have seemingly left it to find other things to do, in the simplest scents, they have stopped finding it pull them in as they have grown bored of it.. most common thing i hear on the council topic from others is "nothing happens" , "little RP activity happening " and "stale" which was a point i came to earlier. the point being it has already come to that point for some people. my point standing here is, if you dont try and do something, this opinion is not going to change..

now im going to cover something that i have learned from RPing for 18 years, what works for one group wont for another and what failed to work for some people can work for others, the group of RPers you have now are not the ones you had in WOTLK, they wont treat it the same because there not the same audience your catering for . iv heard a lot of claims to previous RP problems , mostly down to "ministers with too much power = elitism " but i have yet to hear after all the "we tried this kinda thing before" if you ever did have someone/something who was able to overrule your ministers in that situation based on public outcry against them? because from what i have seen, you have not, you are using a different example with a different problem as a reason to deny any chance of considering this different, in the system you considered a problem, what could someone of done if a minister over stepped there boundary?  what im viewing here is if a Minister in this situation was to over step there mark.. how long do you think it would be before they got stopped? if Neme in the idea i presented changed the law in a way non agreed with, how long do you think it would be before the public stood against her to the nobles. and then think, how much more RP would be generated like that than a simple "no " from the Councillors at the start ?

now moving onto the final point, i brought this up with Maelmoor and i dont think the subject really hit home in our /w chat on the topic, when we was talking of the direction of the Nobles RP, now.. Mall tried to start this up torn away from the council, i know this as i entered it my self and tried to see how it wuold take off, it suffered a huge issue, which was that it had no focus or ability to set it self one,, why? well, i dont know if mall figured it out but i did pretty fast.

the RP event is about POLITICS , now when you start to think of it, the council deals in ALL politics pretty much, the only way this can go forward in ANYWAY as a political based RP is to link its purpose to the council, its a fact, we cant touch politics that you guys dont cover (you guys do cover pretty much all corner, having ministers in positions and everything else based on laws, trade, the lot, its there) and with the entirety of the nobles meeting pretty much being in the council circle of RP, it makes scents to understand that we will be unable to really do anything or have a place for this without ether joining to resisting the council, because without making up stuff against what you guys are doing , we cant interact with our RP in any way really and the event falls under on the principle it dos nothing , cannot do anything, and lacks a purpose, in other words, saying "lets look at another root for the noble event" is basically saying lets chuck it under the bus, because it serves nothing if it dos not involve it self with the councils workings, how else will it take any involvement in politics without encroaching on what you guys already "govern ", point being if it dont serve a purpose to its existence then it is auto going to fail

Rhena wrote:So anyone who claims to have enough money could rule the city?

well Stormwind is an aristocracy based city... so in essence yes.  the king owns his title because the land owners and rich bastards all gave him that power, they still own the land they have though, and the king is in that kind of system somewhat bound to the reality of his kingdom is owned by the rich and they need to be happy to have him rule them.. that is how such systems existed in there time and that is lore wise what stormwind is

Rhena wrote:overtake the council

remember reading it though, the nobles would not take involvement unless it was brought to them.. as i said, my purposed idea was Ministers no longer have votes on what they do, the Councillors dont really need to vote, the Ministers are free to choose there acts of there department as such without that, but the Nobility take a background involvement, the Ministers are there to take IN ideas and OUTPUT actions on there judgement of what they have presented, there own ideas or ideas of others in the council meeting who bring it up .. the Nobles dont take actions on the Council unless it is brought up as a case (public,, other ministers) where the Nobles THEN have a way of involving them selves, able to overule and such in a situation where they deem the case against them after both sides are heard and the Ministers actions deemed bad .. the idea was to let ministers have that extra freedom, but implement the nobles as an overseer when a case became challenged .. there is no intent on pushing the nobles into the council beyond that.. but the reality of bringing this kind of thing is DOS bring in the point that it would impact how the roles inside the council work even if the nobles are not the ones telling you what to do

replacing the council is somewhat nothing the same.. that is destroying what is there to rebuild.. were talking on different ideas than "lets rip one down and build new in its place" where talking idea pitches

As a hypothetical, would you consider it feasible for member guilds to be afforded council seats proportional to the percentage of membership that their guild makes up? So if a guild is 35% of the total membership of guilds/organisations in the council, they'd get 35% of the total amount of seats in the council. This would mean that each guild member has the same numerical representation in the council, but it'd also present other issues. For example, would you grant seats based purely on character count? Or would you only grant seats based on members that are active parts of the guilds/organisations? If the latter, how would you verify who is and who isn't active enough to count toward the total number? Also, what if one guild manages to fill up to 51% of the total membership count? Their representatives would then get to dictate every decision made in the council. You'd need countermeasures, then, to ensure that the interests of smaller guilds are also represented.

In the end, honestly, a democratic system where each guild has a set amount of seats and each seat has 1 vote on all decisions is, far as I can see, the most reasonable system.

It seems that this thread is now all about the Council, not the House of Nobles anymore, despite the subject. That's not a big deal in itself, but there is a separate thread for that...

Anyway, I guess this isn't a particularly creative post so I'll leave it there.

Replying to every point raised in one reply post seems rather impossible.

But to look at the discussion holistically:- The Council only has what power any select player base gives it. I attend the council, and participate in bits and pieces, but I wouldn't allow a decision made by them that may stump my RP become an issue. Running events within my guild that deal with all kinds of sensitive areas, secret missions as it were etc could all be run by the Council in closed sessions and so on, but given the extensive politics involved I simply opt out of doing so. Still running guild events that technically could concern Stormwind ministers, but I eliminate the barriers to ensure my guild members can still enjoy a weekly event. I understand in the larger picture barriers will still exist, but you really can just go about things a different way if you feel a Council decision is going to wall you off from something. The power is with the player, not the Council.

Where the House of Nobles is concerned however as a solid existing lore organisation it makes it a lot harder to opt out of their involvement if they are required to crunch down on something. But even then, its all hypothetical, should such a situation occur where HoN needed to interfere with the Council then it should be a planned piece of RP, a small event, maybe large, but OOC co-ordination and communication between yourselves will allow for it to not be some messy powergrabbing debacle.

The Council still serves its purpose, and definitely still works in a way where you opt in to being involved in decisions made and rules applied there. As I've RPed around this myself I can say this is still 100% the case. For starting a House of Nobles you could discuss it for hours, debate it for days, if you want to RP it just simply do so. If Council members choose to RP out situations where the two cross over then great, if not you can still run a House of Nobles meeting weekly and still get the same kind of political RP out of it. There doesn't need to be any ultimatums on who is in charge of who.

May have trailed off somewhat..

TL;DR Council power is simply how you choose to take it, if you wanna RP a House of Nobles group just do it, but don't assume power over any other groups.

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:You'd need countermeasures, then, to ensure that the interests of smaller guilds are also represented.

this i can agree with.. although i would personally band reps together into what groups for smaller groups that often RP together, like Mira as a non guild member reping my guild in the same instance,, we share interests in the same points, we are in essence a voice and dont need to try have two different reps since both of us are part of smaller guild, this would be easier, but the point dos stand,.. there is no way you can really achieve balance in this in a way as you have some reps who are literally .. reping them self as they are the only current member of the order involved in the council project as it is now , this is what i meant

Fenodyree wrote:t seems that this thread is now all about the Council, not the House of Nobles anymore, despite the subject. That's not a big deal in itself, but there is a separate thread for that...

the fact the very idea posted here is to link them together .. its fully understandable it comes down to a council debate.. as the topic is to join them