As Morgfyre suggested, this thread is for ideas on how to make Ambassador a more meaningful/useful role.

I'd like to see Ambassador be more meaningful, but that's also my bias as Tajalli is the Ambassador of Glomdoring.

Right now, RP aspects aside; tending to the group's novices is pretty much covered with the collegiums. CR5 and 6 can already welcome/induct people, so the only thing that Ambassador really does that is just its own, is tending the bank account. Everything else already set to it is covered - and more covered, with the onset of the inducting/welcoming denizens.

Personally, I'd like to see Ambassador be more of a true Ambassador role - dealing with the other orgs, both villages and communities alike.
Some things that could come with this could be:

- Special influencing abilities with revolts, for the Ambassador and their aides, or a passive boost to how effective they are with influencing during revolts.

- A decrease in cost for parleying for a commune/city member

ADDED:
(Pulled from the denizen inducting thread)




Anyone else have any ideas?

I hate to shoot you down so fast, but no ministry provides personal bonuses for the minister and aides, nor should they. It's an administrative role.

It would be attached to the role, so should you cease to be in that role, you'd lose that.

Those are things that would affect your commune and other organizations.

So, instead of 'shooting me down' think of something else, then. Come up with another way for Ambassador to become more meaningful. What I came up with was thinking that it is a political role, going by the term "Ambassador" that deals with other organizations. Influence is what came to mind.

I like the parley idea a lot. It does make sense that an Ambassador would be more able to represent a citizen to a wronged party than an average person.

While the parley idea would be useful, and the whole general diplomat-aspect could be built upon...if a ministry is useless, then why even bother having it exist?

That is, if all the roles of the ministry are fulfilled by other people anyways, then it doesn't make much sense to keep the ministry, does it?

Well, what was useless is what the ministry was set as. So, yes, the options would be either eliminate the ministry, or change what its purpose is. I'd rather see it change than get wiped out - it would be interesting and a nice turn to have a diplomatic/foreign relations role - something different than CL and respective courts.

I think the special influencing is likely to make the Ambassador even more pointless, because the city leaders will want everyone who influences aided to the Ambassador's office to gain the maximum advantage during village revolts. Thus, the Ambassador's duties will be limited to appointing all the city/commune's active influencers as aides.

The second idea I like, but I'll have to think more about it. Certainly, I don't think it should be limited to only parleying, and so while that might be an interesting perk and provide cool RP flavour, the Ministry needs something more substantial as well.

I don't know if there are any plans in the works for an Ally/Enemy/War/Soldier system, but if there were, I could see Ambassadors playing an administrative role in some of those statuses.

Diplomatic Immunity-- The Ambassador cannot be enemied to any org, however as a result, they are surrounded by an Aura of Diplomacy while in enemy territory, which acts like a Grace of Innocence, preventing them from being the target or source of aggressive actions. They cannot be teleported or tesserected to.

Negotiations-- The Ambassador's offices of the 4 great nations have the ability to deal with enemy status on behalf of their aligned territories. Thus, if a member of the Ambassador's office goes to an aligned faction's leader, their attempt at amnesty is automatically successful, so that they can gain the gold from the negotiations for their nation, or can gain other resources and/or favors if gold is not the desired pay.

Honorary Citizenship-- The Ambassador has access to the other orgs Newsboards/CT. This, however, can be denied to an Ambassador by some sort of command, however that could be considered an act of pre-emptive aggressive.

Umm..

Mark of the Embassy-- The Ambassador and their aides are able to bestow a Mark of the Embassy onto people of other orgs. This shows in their honors while it is active, as well as in their description. For those orgs who may not want outsiders wandering freely, this would allow those who have shown themselves trustworthy to be marked as such, so that the org's citizens need not worry and rush about to push them out. The Mark lasts an IG year, but can be stripped by the Ambassador.

Here are some admittedly bad ideas, intended to inspire other people to have better ideas:

Trade Agreements: The ambassador and his aides can do a special kind of influence battle against the leader of a village under their nation's influence. If they win, for one game month tithing is increased by 20%, since they negotiated better trade terms. If they lose, it's decreased by the same amount.

Diplomatic Relations: The Ambassador can do a brief action to an individual of his city or commune to give them a temporary (one game day) boost at village influencing. Aides can do it too, but the boost is only 75% as potent.

Foreign Policy: The ambassador or his aides can cause everyone currently logged in to switch from crusade to sanctuary or back, by doing a single command at the nexus during a violent influence. (This breaks any existing campaigns of course.)

I agree with Synl on this one. We don't need new bureaucracy. If the org functions fine without, there's no need.

You can't go changing prices or influence strength. You just can't. Everything is going to get balanced around ambassador aides doing the buying/parleying/influence strength and it'll become a blanket nerf to a common skill and everyone is going to get railroaded into the ministry--and ministers who aren't ok with that are going to get replaced. That's the wrong way to run a ministry.

You can't add personal benefit. The steward (which is another position that just needs to go away, what little power it has merged with the treasury) doesn't get income from bank interest. The trade ministry doesn't see lower prices at comm shops. The power minister can't hold 11p on the prompt. That's not what city ministries do. City ministries help run the city.

The problem with that being that the very idea of an Ambassador is someone who interacts with other nations.. and given that they have no ability to do that beyond anyone else.. its stupid.

What there needs to be is 4 separate Ambassadors, one to each other org, and their aides can have jack for power, but the Ambassadors need something to fit the highly political role that they're being named after.

And that's part of the problem with a game of text where people can send tells and messages--there's no need to send ambassadors to deal the negotiations for you, which is what they're all about.

I'd have to agree with Xavius on most points here.

My take:

If we want to keep the Ambassador Ministry, flip the lens and start looking at them as political/negotiating roles. Expect, even require skill in Influence and Dramatics from those who wish to fill the position. Have them demonstrate their ability to debate, not only mechanically but through actual raising of argument and rebuttal in conversation. As a Diplomat, they will need to know how to convince others of the correctness or incorrectness of an action.

If we want the Ambassadors to have some sort of diplomatic immunity, work it in game. It should be no more or less a guarantee of safety than it is in real life. Just don't expect 'diplomatic immunity' to hold up when the Diplomat is involved in combat. Frankly, I would love to see face fo face diplomacy take place more often. It's a battlefield of its own.

That said, I think we should destroy that role mechanically and instead just have the respective org leaderships communicate with each other as to who their recognized diplomats are, expected behavior, limits, rights, so on. You want to negotiate, get started. All this really requires is either a new clan per org, or a new position created within each org's leadership clan.

Agreed. After IC decades of being Glomdoring's Steward, I've used my "stewarding abilities" twice, and they were both to look something up for someone.

Yes. Eliminate the position. There's already too many.

Originally, the ambassador ministry existed to let people into the commune, take care of relations with city enemies, and take care of novices.

Virtually anybody can do the first, Ambassadors aren't actually equipped to do the second, and the Collegiums have hijacked the third.

Either kill the position, give it more power so that it can regain the second function, or implement new features which rely on ambassadors. My suggestion:

• Ambassadors can, by going to the nexus of another city or commune, establish embassies. This requires the consent of their ambassador.
• Having an embassy allows you to pick an aide to be your city's emissary to that city. Emissaries appear on the city they've been sent to's CW, cannot be enemied to it (Although the embassy can be destroyed by that city's own Ambassador).
• There are several treaties that can be signed between ambassadors who each have embassies and envoys within each other's cities.
• A treaty of transparency allows emissaries to listen to the city channels of cities they've been sent to.
• Trade treaties are customisable. They specify a certain amount of gold, power and specific commodities for another certain amount of gold, power and specific commodities. They end as soon as they cannot be fulfilled. You can have multiple trade treaties. This allows all communes to have a better-rounded choice of commodities.
• A city can only ally with one other organisation at any given time. During a village influence, allied nations share their crusades; a city leader can use a command to aid an ally during an influence, causing their citisen's influencing to help them instead.

That, of course, would radically change the political landscape in Lusternia. Which is why I think it's a good idea.

I like the truth virus' ideas.

Although, my first thought was that we should be careful about deciding to build the Great Wall, because the discovery of Magnetism will make it obsolete.