Stewards or Dukes?

[TinCow]

I am happy to play with permanent Dukes (which is what the poll is suggesting) but I would regard players ignoring their position on the family tree just as I would regard them ignoring their traits - ie as bad role playing.

I know it's hard to role-play a close family relation with someone you don't really know on the internet and I know it takes two. But completely ignoring a bond of kinship just seems wrong. At least role-play that your father means nothing to you, is distant from you or something.

I'm inclined to suggest that a player who wants to completely ignore their family tree position be given a recruitable general and leave the family members to those who want to role-play family members.

Of course, the above is no criticism of TC, who wonderfully role-played Lothar as a brother to Matthias in KotR.

I am simply of the opinion that we cannot (and should not) force people to roleplay in a certain manner. It should certainly be encouraged, as it is good for the game, but I would prefer to let everyone decide who their characters are on their own. Even the best roleplayers ignore random traits that pop up late and have no conceivable relationship to the character they have built. The same can easily be true for relationships that appear on the family tree, particularly due to adoptions. While many of these could be roleplayed if the player worked at it, there's no way to force them to do so and so I prefer to keep the rules out of it.

+ didn't KotR have a problem with how the family tree was populated from left to right or something? Basically the leftmost branch would get all the new family members while the rightmost got nothing until the whole row was filled out?

Yes, Austria was perpetually short on membership until we got fed up with it and allowed RBGs to be recruited.