KOTR Postmortem and Next-Gen Rules Discussion

[Ituralde]

Alright, I seem to have caused some confusion here. Firstly because I'm throwing around different ideas, and secondly you all seem to be tired, while I just got up. It's good living in different time zones.

So let me just present you with two example scenarios that I will first describe with the current system and then describe with my system, which will allow titles to passed on.

We will be dealing with House Amazing, which consists of Duke Adam, Marquess Bertram, Count Charles, Viscount Dave, Baron Ethan, and Baronet Friedrich.

Current Rules:

Example A: Duke names Heir

Duke Adam names his Heir, which leads to two scenarios:

Scenario A: Internal Heir
Duke Adam has made a Will where he names Marquess Bertram to be his heir.
Adam dies and Bertram gets his land. He is now a Marquess at the head of House Amazing. The death of Adam has caused the whole House to loose its Ducal powers. The Ducal Army will probably have to be disbanded.
Marquess Bertram can now use the additional territory he has to either gain a new vassal for himself, making is House a litte bit more stable or he trades the land in exchange for Knight George swearing fealty to Baronet Friedrich, thus pushing everybody up the ladder one step.

Scenario B: External Heir
Duke Adam has made a Will where he names Knight George to be his heir.
Adam dies and George gets his land, making him Baronet George. Baronet George can now go ahead and swear fealty to everyone he likes. He could swear fealty to Baronet Friedrich of House Amazing, pushing Marquess Bertram to the position of Duke. But he could also choose to remain without a House or just swear fealty to someone from House Boring, or House Chivalry.

Example B: Count names Heir

Count Charles names his Heir, which leads to two scenarios:

Scenario A: Internal Heir
Count Charles names Marquess Betram to be his heir. (Seems to be a nice chap) Charles dies and Bertram gets his land. Bertram is now a Baronet (!). Former Duke Adam is now a Baron with his trusted vassal Bertram.
Viscount Dave is now head of his new little House Daring.
Bertram can now at least use his one province to get Knight George to swear fealty to him. The once grand House Amazing has been split into the two smaller Houses Amazing and Daring through the death of Count Charles.

Scenario B: External Heir
Count Charles names Knight George to be his heir. Charles dies and George gets his land, making him Baronet George. Duke Adam is a Baron with his trusted vassal Bertram. Viscount Dave is head of House Daring.
I'm not gonna list all possibilities here, but they are plentifold!

Inherited Title Rules:

Example C: Duke names Heir

Duke Adam names his Heir, which leads to two scenarios:

Scenario A: Internal Heir
Duke Adam names Marquess Bertram to be his heir. Adam dies and now his land, title and private army are given to Marquess Bertram. He is now Duke Bertram and controls a total of two Private Armies, two regions and still has his loyal vassals. BUT he will loose all this when the requirements for Duke are checked the next time, because he clearly doesn't meet them. He needs to either find himself a new Marquess, or which is more likely convince Knight George to swear fealty to Baronet Friedrich, pushing everybody up the ladder and making Bertram a proper Duke.

Scenario B: External Heir
Duke Adam names Knight George to be his heir. Adam dies and now his land, title and private army go to Knight George. He is now Duke George and controls one Private Army and one region. Marquess Bertram can now decide to swear fealty to him, if he does not this will not be counted as a declaration of Civil War. George can now decide to go down fighting by declaring Civil War on Marquess Bertram instead, trying to find another Marquess to swear fealty to him or just accept the fact that he will at least be a Baronet after the next time Rank requirements are checked and start from there.

Example D: Count names Heir

Count Charles names his heir, leading to two scenarios:

Scenario A: Internal Heir
Count Charles names Marquess Bertram to be his heir. Charles dies and now his land, title and private army go to Marquess Bertram. Viscount Dave can now decide to swear fealty to him, if he does not this will not be counted as a declaration of Civil War. Bertram however together with his Lord Adam now controls three private Armys and could now declare Civil War on Viscount Dave who still celebrates his newfound House Daring!

Scenario B: External Heir
Count Charles names Knight George to be his heir. Charles dies and now his land, title and private army go to Knight George. He is now Count George (time-in-rank requirements are ignored) and can decide to swear fealty to Marquess Betram. At the same time Viscount Dave can now decide to swear fealty to Count George. If everybody swears fealty House Amazing is saved and Duke Adam can go on as before, if not. Well the possibilities for Civil War are manyfold. Alternatively Count George could try to find a Viscount somewhere and create House Gavelkind with him on top.



Writing those examples above I realized several things. Inheritance is a nightmare no matter which system we use. Just try to imagine what happens if Duke Adam had chosen Viscount Xaver from House Xanthen to be his heir.
I'm not saying my system is perfect, I actually realized it's far rom that, but especially Example A Scenario B shows to me where the problem with the current system lies. House Daring consisting of three people suddenly is more or equally powerful than House Amazing. Strange things are bound to happen and I believe that the whole inheritance issue has not been discussed enough yet! I'm really open to suggestions here.

I hope this has given you some food for thought.

[Zim]

My issue is that not only would Houses be tremendouly unstable, but the problem Tristan mentioned comes into play. If I'm a Marquess at the top of a chain, I can fight as many battles as I want, and if my character dies the House will probably stay together. I can also let the lowest ranks fight, as their dying might lower me a rank if they're a vital part of the chain, but would probably not break up the House.

On the other hand, there's no way in Heck I'll let my middle rank players fight unless they do something drastic like threaten to leave, because one of them dying would throw the House into chaos.

I guess in the end it will turn out to be a largely imaginary fear. If the top ranking member was a good leader the lower ranks will probably not mind reswearing oaths, and Houses that last any length of time will likely develop a sense of comradery and shared purpose making them more likely to stay together. If either ends, then it deserves to fall apart.

Well, my diagrams help me think stuff out so maybe it will help others.

As for the rules, they state currently that the moment you lose a requirement for a rank, you lose the rank. And that is what I have been going off of when I give my answers. That is why a chain breaks apart.

A contraction would force players into oaths they never agreed to. Same with forcing the heir to move to the top. Right now we have a very voluntary system. But what you and Ituralde have proposed has an element of involuntary oath swearing. At first glance, that is not a road I'd like to go down.



Yup, that is the current system. It is all IC.

[Privateerkev]

Ituralde:

I like your post, it helps me visualize some things you have been talking about.

Here is my problem with your proposed rules. They do not require rank to be checked constantly. In the current rules, we check for rank every second of every day. The moment you meet the requirement, you make the rank. The moment you miss a requirement, you go to the highest rank you qualify for.

For yours to work, you would need to have us only check rank periodically. I rather things be more flexible and fluid. The potential problems with chains breaking just don't bother me. I figure we will just RP around any breaking and figure things out. Sure it won't be as historically accurate but I don't mind much.

[Privateerkev]

My issue is that not only would Houses be tremendouly unstable, but the problem Tristan mentioned comes into play. If I'm a Marquess at the top of a chain, I can fight as many battles as I want, and if my character dies the House will probably stay together. I can also let the lowest ranks fight, as their dying might lower me a rank if they're a vital part of the chain, but would probably not break up the House.

On the other hand, there's no way in Heck I'll let my middle rank players fight unless they do something drastic like threaten to leave, because one of them dying would throw the House into chaos.

I guess in the end it will turn out to be a largely imaginary fear. If the top ranking member was a good leader the lower ranks will probably not mind reswearing oaths, and Houses that last any length of time will likely develop a sense of comradery and shared purpose making them more likely to stay together. If either ends, then it deserves to fall apart.

This is where RP'ing comes in. It forces players to communicate with their people and rewards active players. We will have no more inactive Dukes like we had in KotR. If you RP enough and communicate, I think you'll have no problem getting your chain to re-arrange itself.

[Ituralde]

Seems like it took me so long to post my thoughts, that you already had a discussion about it without me starting it.

And yes, I was going from a system where rank requirements are only checked periodically, say at every LEGAL BODY session. I think one of the problems of checking constantly would be what to do with the Private Armies that become free and occupied and so on.

Also to your former question, I never intended for rank requirements to be altered through inheritance, apart from the time-in-rank one. So you still need all those vassals.

As a last note I slowly see where those wanting a hybrid system are coming from. I need to think on that some more.

[Privateerkev]

And yes, I was going from a system where rank requirements are only checked periodically, say at every LEGAL BODY session. I think one of the problems of checking constantly would be what to do with the Private Armies that become free and occupied and so on.

Maybe it would be helpful to have rank checked only periodically. Maybe split it down the middle and have it every 10 years? So once in the middle of the term and once right before the governing body session? That would allow both a little stability and a little flexibility.

Is having the ranks updated constantly effecting any other part of the rules? I am tired and afraid I'm missing something.

[Zim]

The need to interact with your vassals and RP to keep a House together is one of the most exciting things for me about the new rules.

I do wonder if we may have a tiny bit of nostalgia for the old KOTR days, though. Chances are under the new system stable Houses will have active, personably leaders. One may deserve the name House Chivalry Ituralde used, and another House Dread, but both will likely have leaders who respect and reward their vassals. In this big respect stable Houses will be similiar.

In KOTR Dukes had so little to fear from other House members that Houses developed their character from their Dukes. I can't imagine it was great fun to serve under an inactive Duke, or Duke Ansehelm, but their Houses were vastly different from the well run Austrian and Bavarian ones. You knew in the end if you joined House Swabia you'd have little recognition from your Duke but no micromanaging either, and if you joined Franconia in the Ansehelm days, well, if what i hear is true you deserve whatever happens.

So Franconia could produce people like Peter, and Swabia at one point had most of it's avatars considering going to Outremer without damaging the House. Now, Houses like that would probably die outright.

Not advocating a return to the old rules at all, I just think it's kind of interesting.

This is where RP'ing comes in. It forces players to communicate with their people and rewards active players. We will have no more inactive Dukes like we had in KotR. If you RP enough and communicate, I think you'll have no problem getting your chain to re-arrange itself.

[Privateerkev]

The need to interact with your vassals and RP to keep a House together is one of the most exciting things for me about the new rules.

I totally agree. That is why I fear us implementing any rule that might remove the incentive to RP.

I do wonder if we may have a tiny bit of nostalgia for the old KOTR days, though. Chances are under the new system stable Houses will have active, personably leaders. One may deserve the name House Chivalry Ituralde used, and another House Dread, but both will likely have leaders who respect and reward their vassals. In this big respect stable Houses will be similiar.

I suspect that will happen. Like minded folk will go find others similarly minded. I think some Houses will be very stable and others will rise and fall. I can't wait for us to start so I can see how this all unfolds. The test game is tiding me over a little though. :D

In KOTR Dukes had so little to fear from other House members that Houses developed their character from their Dukes. I can't imagine it was great fun to serve under an inactive Duke, or Duke Ansehelm, but their Houses were vastly different from the well run Austrian and Bavarian ones. You knew in the end if you joined House Swabia you'd have little recognition from your Duke but no micromanaging either, and if you joined Franconia in the Ansehelm days, well, if what i hear is true you deserve whatever happens.

Yup. The Duke was written into the rules, and if he became Duke, he had it for life unless he resigned. With the position being impossible to lose, a Duke did not really have to interact with others to keep their position. So, players tried different things with being Duke. Some tried to keep their House happy and their members busy. Some tried the dictator approach since they couldn't be fired. Some players pretty much left the game for long spans of time, only returning to fight a battle or vote.

So, I like that the ranks are contingent on making people happy. It might not be totally accurate but it should be more fun.

[Zim]

I think so, too. That post was a little tongue in cheek. Note both of the examples of Houses with "character" for a time were negative ones.

I'm especially curious to see what will happen once semi-stable Houses are formed. What will happen if one gets a leader that's a little rough around the edges, or perhaps unstable? Will the other members break their oaths and leave a less than optimum leader, or will their be a strong enough taboo against breaking oaths that a less than optimum leader could still keep enough support that the threat of civil war would deter the others? How far can boundaries be pushed before leading to rebellion?

Despite having tried to throw around some ideas tonight, I think I've decided that to really know whether what I and a few others have been trying to fix is even broken will require us to start the actual game and play it a while. Then if these fears become big problems we can do something about them.

You've convinced me.

So, I like that the ranks are contingent on making people happy. It might not be totally accurate but it should be more fun.

[_Tristan_]

On a practical note, I prefer the rules as proposed by Ituralde...

Let's imagine a situation where Duke Archibald (being the only convenient avatar) is en route to Bern to take on the Mongol stacks that materialized there, threatening the citadel. He has taken with him his Ducal army and the private army of his Marquis.

Now, during the battle with the nomads, Duke Archibald meets his creator but scores a victory against one stack. Now we have a stack (which might still have an avatar at its head) that through the death of the Duke has no reason for existence and should be disbanded... This leads to the destruction of Bern by the Mongols...

Now, if we apply Ituralde's rule, even with the death of Duke Archibald, Baronet Bohemond, his second in command in the stack, can take over and hope he will eventually prevail against the Horde.

This doesn't prevent us from checking every two years for rank requirements (thus allowing enough time for the feudal chain to reform, or not) and allowing enough time for strategic decisions to be implemented...

What I wouldn't like to see is armies dissolving into thin air simply because
a noble fell one rank... It would wreak havoc on our economy...

I have to admit there would much more challenge fighting the AI, though...

Just my

[Privateerkev]

Despite having tried to throw around some ideas tonight, I think I've decided that to really know whether what I and a few others have been trying to fix is even broken will require us to start the actual game and play it a while. Then if these fears become big problems we can do something about them.

You've convinced me.

That's a good point. No matter what, we can always change this stuff later.

What's funny is that you guys have been convincing me. Slowly of course. Excruciatingly slowly...

But I am becoming more and more convinced that a hybrid with checks/balances and the all important caveat that we can just change it OOC later, will be the best bet for making a fun game.

I first wanted something like the current rules where things are fluid. But you guys have expertly poked enough holes in the rules to show that a certain amount of instability would be un-fun even for me.

Yes, even I want a small measure of stability.
(but just a small amount... )

On that note, I think it is time for me to go to bed. I need to get up in a couple hours for work.

Thanks to everyone for a fast-paced and productive rule conversation.

*edit*
Tristan: I'm slowly being convinced that we might want a "periodic" rank check instead of the current "constant" rank check.

I liked the "constant" rank check but you guys bring up good points on what happens to armies if people die or Houses fall. Currently, it would be up to the whim of the Chancellor if an army stopped being "official" due to death.

[Zim]

I don't think personal armies are disbanded automatically if their owner dies. I think they just revert to Chancellor control.

On a practical note, I prefer the rules as proposed by Ituralde...

Let's imagine a situation where Duke Archibald (being the only convenient avatar) is en route to Bern to take on the Mongol stacks that materialized there, threatening the citadel. He has taken with him his Ducal army and the private army of his Marquis.

Now, during the battle with the nomads, Duke Archibald meets his creator but scores a victory against one stack. Now we have a stack (which might still have an avatar at its head) that through the death of the Duke has no reason for existence and should be disbanded... This leads to the destruction of Bern by the Mongols...

Now, if we apply Ituralde's rule, even with the death of Duke Archibald, Baronet Bohemond, his second in command in the stack, can take over and hope he will eventually prevail against the Horde.

This doesn't prevent us from checking every two years for rank requirements (thus allowing enough time for the feudal chain to reform, or not) and allowing enough time for strategic decisions to be implemented...

What I wouldn't like to see is armies dissolving into thin air simply because
a noble fell one rank... It would wreak havoc on our economy...

I have to admit there would much more challenge fighting the AI, though...

Just my

[Zim]

What? Does that mean I'll have to go to bed or, worse, work on my resume for the job I'm applying for tomorrow?

Nooooooooo!

On that note, I think it is time for me to go to bed. I need to get up in a couple hours for work.

[FactionHeir]

This is all getting rather confusing.

Here is how a more or less real feudal system would look like (ignore title names):

Grand Duke: Needs 24 land of which 14 must be given away to bond Counts. If a Count renounces or dies without a natural/adopted heir, the rented land returns to the Grand Duke.

Duke: Needs 16 land of which at least 7 must be given away to bond Counts. If a Count renounces or dies without a natural/adopted heir, the rented land returns to the Duke.

When two counts decide they wish to move up and create a Ducal house or a large house led by a count wishes to move everyone up a step, a charter of a Ducal house is formed that must pass with absolute majority (1 house) or agreement of 2 counts to settle inheritance and other matters. As the position of Duke requires giving up land to at least 1 Count vassal, this charter is to ensure that the Ducal house doesn't just collapse out of nowhere. Once you become a Ducal house, the lands combined to form a Duchy. Counts under a Duke may not renounce they loyalties but may attempt to topple the Duke if supported by the FactionLeader in a civil war.

Count: Needs 7 land of which at least 3 must be subletted to create Marquess. If a Marquis renounces or dies without a natural/adopted heir, the rented land returns to the Count.

Starting from Count, a charter of a house must be created to create the Count of House. This can be a simple piece stating that House X has formed or also create rules for inheritance disputes etc. Charter must pass with absolute majority by the applicant house. Amendments must pass with absolute majority.

Marquis: Needs 3 land of which at least 1 must be subletted to create Barons. If a Baron renounces or dies without a natural/adopted heir, the rented land returns to the Marquis.

Baron: Needs 1 land, subletted or otherwise


Note that this system is top down rather than bottoms up. If your vassal renounces or dies, the rented land is returned to you as it is your land with all vassals to it still attached under a minor house. In a house or Duchy, the charter rules inheritance but otherwise defaults to the above.

The "at least" requirement gives added stability to the structure if you have 2 vassals to your rank and one renounces. A grace period of say 10 turns could be imposed during which you need to regain lands in a civil war or otherwise for instance.

[Ignoramus]

Speaking from a rebel's point of view, I don't think it is good to allow a potential rebel so much bargaining power. If he was a Viscount, he could effectively bring the house down by breaking his oath, thus holding the house to ransom.

That's the problem with our system at the moment. The lower ranks are too crucial to a house. Why should a knight be able to threaten a Duke?

[Zim]

Well, a knight couldn't do that, but a baronet might be able to.

I think with the Viscount thing, the Viscout would have to convince everyone else to join him. otherwise he'd be a very lonely rebel. Sure, the Count would drop at least one rank, but if most of the House are on his side he'd likely initiate a civil war to bring the Viscount back into the fold or take his land. If the Viscount did convince all of the House to rebel, he'd deserve that kind of bargaining power.

Speaking from a rebel's point of view, I don't think it is good to allow a potential rebel so much bargaining power. If he was a Viscount, he could effectively bring the house down by breaking his oath, thus holding the house to ransom.

That's the problem with our system at the moment. The lower ranks are too crucial to a house. Why should a knight be able to threaten a Duke?

[_Tristan_]

Still, a Viscount could bring down his Duke and by defecting to another House, gain that new house support...(even without a new oath...)

Now that new House should prove more powerful than the Viscount former one and enable it to "attack" it...

It seems a lot of power for a single avatar

[Ituralde]

Speaking from a rebel's point of view, I don't think it is good to allow a potential rebel so much bargaining power. If he was a Viscount, he could effectively bring the house down by breaking his oath, thus holding the house to ransom.

That's the problem with our system at the moment. The lower ranks are too crucial to a house. Why should a knight be able to threaten a Duke?

I think Ignoramus touches on the real gripe I have with the current system. Right now it doesn't really matter who becomes Lord so much. Like PK said earlier, as long as a certain amount of people want to share the power they can push one of their own to the top. But it doesn't matter whom they push. In the end everyone in the group enjoys the same privileges. Some directly, because they hold the respective position, some indirectly because they are responsible for letting their lord hold the position.

I agree that every vassal should count and be important for the Duke. That's why the Duke has to keep his vassals happy. The indifference whether you're ruled by Adam, Bertram or Charles bothers me somehow. I guess this is a thing though that can't really be pushed into rules but needs to come from the IC part of the game.

However this turns out I look forward to toying around with this!

[Ituralde]

Still, a Viscount could bring down his Duke and by defecting to another House, gain that new house support...(even without a new oath...)

Now that new House should prove more powerful than the Viscount former one and enable it to "attack" it...

It seems a lot of power for a single avatar

Two pages ago we were complaining that the middle ranks didn't have enough power, now they're having too much. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If it's too risky you can always try to get more vassals and form a tree rather than a ladder.

On another note seeing how unstable this can all get I think it wouldn't hurt to go back to the initial requirements for Dukes and above, without the branch under Count TinCow suggested recently. The way I see it, it will be hard enough to get up and especially hard to stay up if you don't invest in a tree anyway. So I see no need to force people to do it.

[Zim]

I've been rethinking the branching requirements as well, but I'm not sure what to think. It's hard to say how unstable the new system will be. Houses with good leaders could end up very tight knit groups with little chance of rebellion, or they could be very unstable. We won't know until we play a while.

Personally I think there should be a strong IC taboo on breaking oaths for anything other than voluntary House restructuring, and any character of mine with high loyalty and/or chivalry will likely see oathbreaking as a very serious offense.

I'd consider lower requirements to stay in a position than to attain one if it wouldn't make things entirely too complicated.

Two pages ago we were complaining that the middle ranks didn't have enough power, now they're having too much. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If it's too risky you can always try to get more vassals and form a tree rather than a ladder.

On another note seeing how unstable this can all get I think it wouldn't hurt to go back to the initial requirements for Dukes and above, without the branch under Count TinCow suggested recently. The way I see it, it will be hard enough to get up and especially hard to stay up if you don't invest in a tree anyway. So I see no need to force people to do it.

[AussieGiant]

Having seen some of these examples I think we need to be really conscious of not making things too complex.

I know that is hard to do but...we will put people off this game if you need to be a quasi lawyer just to survive in the game, or in fact be able to achieve any progress.

I think at some point we will all wonder about how KotR worked in hind sight.

In as many instances as possible we need to let IC work handle things.

Keep in mind we are ONLY now talking about the OOC game rules...can you imagine the IC legislation on top of what we have OOC?

[Ituralde]

I really hope we won't see as many rule changes, now that the ability to propose them is limited to the top ranks. They really got annoying in KotR.

[AussieGiant]

I really hope we won't see as many rule changes, now that the ability to propose them is limited to the top ranks. They really got annoying in KotR.

It really did and I like that TC has put CA's in only the top ranks. It's a nice touch.

[TinCow]

Egads... three pages pop up over night. I haven't read page 10 yet, but there's a couple things I want to respond to.

First, I really don't think the death of any single member of a House will 'destabilize' the House. Whether it's the top rank, a middle rank, or a bottom rank, all the death will do is decrease the power of the House by a small to moderate amount. Is that really instability? It just seems to me that it's a temporary loss in power and influence as the result of the death of an important nobleman. Seems fair to me. Also, keep in mind that the dead person can reincarnate the very next turn. If they prepared properly and gave their lands to other House members via their Will, then they could simply rejoin the House as a brand new nobleman and restore it to its original power the very next turn. That's not exactly the end of the world, is it?

Sure, the House will lose power for a longer period of the person does not return to it on reincarnation, but I see that as an IC issue. The point is that there's a perfectly useful and easy method for the House to retain exactly the same level of power without many problems at all.

Second, I'm really interested in hearing about how we can mod the family tree. Any more specifics we can get on that would be useful.

[TinCow]

My issue is that not only would Houses be tremendouly unstable, but the problem Tristan mentioned comes into play. If I'm a Marquess at the top of a chain, I can fight as many battles as I want, and if my character dies the House will probably stay together. I can also let the lowest ranks fight, as their dying might lower me a rank if they're a vital part of the chain, but would probably not break up the House.

On the other hand, there's no way in Heck I'll let my middle rank players fight unless they do something drastic like threaten to leave, because one of them dying would throw the House into chaos.

I guess in the end it will turn out to be a largely imaginary fear. If the top ranking member was a good leader the lower ranks will probably not mind reswearing oaths, and Houses that last any length of time will likely develop a sense of comradery and shared purpose making them more likely to stay together. If either ends, then it deserves to fall apart.

That's the entire point of the rules. I specifically stated in my commentary that I wanted people to be afraid of dying once they reached a high rank. The idea is to make battles too risky for Dukes and Grand Dukes and such, so that battles are given to the low level ranks like Knight and Baron/et. This was to spread out some of the action in the game and ensure that it wasn't monopolized by people who grabbed the first few provinces early.

I was working for a system which would have heavy and immediate involvement for new players who joined mid-game. A brand new Knight character that popped up would be courted by multiple Houses, all of whom want him, and he would get to see immediate action leading armies. I created it like that to keep the game interesting for new people and to make it easy for people to join in mid-way through.

[FactionHeir]

Not much you can do with the family tree. You can increase the number per branch, but this causes endless bugs as those further branches will not show up in the tree view and thus their kids and adoptees won't either even though they will be counted as family members. I'm not sure if that's what is really wanted.

Making more princesses...can only be done temporarily, i.e. at start of game by changing what the faction starts out with. Note that doing so will make some starting characters quite old as father-offspring needs at least a 16 year difference.

[TinCow]

I don't think personal armies are disbanded automatically if their owner dies. I think they just revert to Chancellor control.

This is exactly correct. A sympathetic Chancellor could even let a House continue to use an army as if it were their 'lost' Private Army. The point is simply that the House can no longer do it without the Chancellor's permission.

[Ramses II CP]

Whew, that was a lot to read through. My thoughts:

1. Why is instability a bad thing? If a substantial house falls apart that sounds like a fun gameplay experience, with people scrambling for power and lower nobles getting a chance to move up (Or higher ones down!). Realisitic? No, but I don't care, it sounds like fun.

2. A higher rank should be able to designate only the recipient of his own land, the lower ranks in the chain should have the choice of whether or not to continue their service to the new Duke or etc.

3. The in character consequences of breaking an oath casually will be unpleasant. We know the group we have here, making an OOC rule to place time limits on oath breaking is just going to end up limiting gameplay unecessarily.

So put my vote in for maximum OOC instability and using IC pressures to maintain loyalty and faith.

[Privateerkev]

1. Why is instability a bad thing? If a substantial house falls apart that sounds like a fun gameplay experience, with people scrambling for power and lower nobles getting a chance to move up (Or higher ones down!). Realisitic? No, but I don't care, it sounds like fun.

I totally agree. But others are showing some real reservations towards that. I would prefer to keep it as close to the current rules as possible.

To me, instability will provide for more RP opportunities. And it will reward active players. If you want to be able to take advantage of the unstable moment, like when a House falls apart, you need to be active.

In my opinion, encouraging and rewarding active RP'ing will be a good thing.

2. A higher rank should be able to designate only the recipient of his own land, the lower ranks in the chain should have the choice of whether or not to continue their service to the new Duke or etc.

Currently, that is pretty much the system. The Duke can leave the land in a will. When he dies, everyone in the chain can break their oaths to each other at will, with the possible civil war consequences of course.

3. The in character consequences of breaking an oath casually will be unpleasant. We know the group we have here, making an OOC rule to place time limits on oath breaking is just going to end up limiting gameplay unecessarily.

I think your right. I think TC envisioned his rules as providing you with an idea of what is "possible". I don't think we should limit that OOC. IC however, we should feel free to limit that a good amount. That way it comes about organic in the game itself and it is not just us putting limits on possibilities.

So put my vote in for maximum OOC instability and using IC pressures to maintain loyalty and faith.

preach on brother Ramses...

[OverKnight]

I'm still having a difficult time wrapping my head around all the rules, much less the debates about the rules. I won't have a true appreciation for the game until we start playing.

My personal preference is to keep things as simple as possible. The Chancellor will be doing the heavy lifting on keeping track of all this, so we should avoid over burdening that position.

It seems even more than KotR the emphasis will be on role-playing, and the rise and fall of Houses and characters will depend on it. I'm all for that. The strength of countries and noble Houses often depended on the charisma and command abilities of their leaders. All the land in the world won't mean anything if you can't keep vassals. For this and simplcity, I'm opposed to adding land into the equation for titles.

If any glaring weakness emerge in game play, we can address them then.