Player run kingdoms and religions

[Thalia]

What if the IMMs have the first vote -- you apply, we add you to the ballot, then the appropriate characters vote?

Appropriate characters  = characters in the matching religion/kingdom, with more than ... ? 10 hours ? 100 hours ? Based on Rank (Subdeacon or higher for Religion?  nobles in a kingdom?)

[Daklore]

But then you have to do work that isn't upgrading my religion spells, or making my priest spells not suck, or giving me priest spells that can make people blow up from the loldamage.

And we all know fuzzbutt is lazier than I am anyway. And I'm preeeeeetty lazy.

[Chalgyr]

why would we want to spend time helping out with Daklore skills?

Though, the religion spells brings up another topic I've considered in the past as well.

It sounds like overall, people do prefer the player run overall. Of course, that's what we're used to here. Could you envision a scenario where you had NPC run, and you just had to meet their requirements? Take rankings in most MMO's - there's not people running things. But you get titles, or ranks based on some other system (like pvp points or completing certain quests or whatever). But there's almost no limit. No one becomes a supreme for example, but you can have a handful of cardinals - it's just that those people have to put in the work, but it's not limited. I guess I'm just curious if the NPC factions are viewed as a complete 'no' - I'm not talking about scrapping them here or taking away what anyone's got right now. Just more of a general curiosity if you were starting from scratch somewhere.

[elios]

Chalgyr:

I think there are other factors that come into play besides the knowledge or number of hours a player's character has got in a faith or a kingdom position or in whether or not they have for the roleplay experience points.  One of the more important factors to take into account is the emotional maturity of the player behind the character and if they have got the ability to roleplay a character beyond the established rank in religion or kingdom especially in the matter of religion rank.

I believe that players with characters that are kings-queens or hold the title of supreme of a faith do and must take into account those out of character and in character factors.  Otherwise you would have players with characters that are cardinals that would  be happily abusing their character's authority for some childish reason or other.  Keep the non player character supremes and rulers if you must only that there be limits as to how high they may promote a player character.

[Daklore]

Benefits of an NPC system: It's a bit more relaxed, but you'd have to look at lowering some of the requirements to rank up--namely time(face it, most of us aren't going to rank up very quickly -because- of the time factor, especially at lower ranks). You don't have in-fighting(rare here, but it does exist in PC run systems) because a NPC(and by extension the staff) control the direction of the city/religion RP.

Benefits of a PC system: More roleplay, well, in theory. In the old system of favourtism, people would have to interact with the ruler/supreme in order to be considered for ranking up. Under the current system, roleplay with the leader isn't really very necessary. But, we also have the low population count. PC run also means that the roleplay of the city/religion develops by player design, rather than just how the staff wants it--which can be good, and it can be bad(bad, it goes in a direction the staff doesn't want because it totally opposes what the original intent was. Good, it can actually make the experience deeper and developed even further than what the staff originally intended). I like to think--I'm biased--that the Tyrek religion background roleplay was the most enhanced during the pre-wipe days(and technically still carries to today) because of the people at the head of the religion ... which was me, which is why I'm biased.

On the flip-side, the other religions were kind of just there, though the Mventious religions had the second most depth because the leaders of those religions were actually in-tune with the idealogy(or were chalgyr). Looking at the religions of right now, Dias and Sys'kee -technically- have the most depth, Sys'kee has a lot of room to expand and improve. Galr and Estrenal are kind of just there, they haven't really been developed because they haven't had that kind of story-telling drive. And then there's Athorien. The only reason that religion is even popular is because of the spells. There is virtually -no- background relevant RP to the religion, there's no visible flavour... it's just, "join for the spells."

So, there's up-sides and down-sides. Personally, I like having player run things... but maybe it's time we downgraded it to player-run religions and consider NPC ran kingdoms. The Kingdoms have the most developped background RP plot, because they were ingrained from the start. They don't -need- the work religions do... ... wait, am I even on topic anymore? The playerbase is just simply too small to have kingdoms -and- religions ran by players. We see this with most people just running away to Tolin. Armengar is now gone, because of the lack of interested population. Tozain and Lapis were "closed" but still remain as they were(no Sye, PCs in the kingdom does not translate to actual population >.>).

So... yeah. If we do revert kingdoms(or religions) to NPC ran, you should really look at trending some of the lower and mid-rank requirements downward. In the case of dropping religions to NPC ran, you'd have to drop the supreme spells down to cardinal as well, otherwise they're wasted(and some of them are pretty good... and some of them outright suck)