I think it is good to explore the idea of decentralised PBM - each player being associated with a province or provinces, and with some military force. We've chewed it over several times with the WoS but never really done anything about it. I think that is because of the technicalities of keeping track of budgets & troops; and reconciling the needs of the faction as a whole with the whims of individual players.

However, I am not sure decentralisation is necessarily the right direction to go with a M2TW PBM, as at least playing it as England, it feels less "provincial" than Roman RTW games. Maybe for a faction like HRE, where there are many borders, it may make more sense (like the east vs west tensions in WoS at the moment).

A few observations about relevant aspects of M2TW:

(a) With M2TW, there seem to be no titles to speak of, so there's no simple "in-game" representation like those wonderful legion banners we enjoy in WoS. A shame, but I guess it gives us some freedom. However, I have a feeling that trying out a decentralised PBM might work better say with EBs Greek cities, where the division between cities is represented by in-game ethnicities.

(b) I'd be reluctant to do 4TPY with M2TW. Out of the box it is 0.5TPY and we'll start doing violence to history (Gothic knights at Hastings etc) if we deviate too much from that.

(c) The ratio of generals to provinces feels like RTW - ie slightly more provinces than generals. So the provinceless Counts may be necessary at the beginning but would not be an important game mechanic.

(d) We have to bear in mind the castle/town distinction. Dukes of towns may feel shortchanged but towns at the margin are arguably best for the kingdom as a whole (specialise troop production in a few upgraded places; let the rest be cash cows).

My instinct would be to fix on a faction first and then sort out suitable arrangements. I think it's a given that we want some WoS type elements - notably elections of players; "motions" constraining them; and delegation of battles to the "lower house" generals on the ground - although the nomenclature may change. How we package this for role-player purposes and whether we need to add extra elements, such as provincial decentralisation, may depend on the faction we choose. Personally, I don't think we could run two WoS type games simultaneously, although multiple traditional PBMs would be possible.

For now, let's keep brainstorming and chewing over ideas. I think we probably should have a poll or something to choose the faction in a fortnight or so. (I'd like someone to actually make a go of HRE in soloplay before I was confident to vote for it for a PBM, for example.) Ideally, we could choose between different "proposals" - someone develops a concept for a particular faction, someone does the same for another and we see which has the widest appeal. I am toying with the idea of restricting the poll to players of the WoS PBM. Not because we'd exclude others, but because this hardcore of players is probably more reliable and should have more "influence".