Well, not necessarily random, it's been on my mind for a while;

As there are now five guilds per city/commune, and thus five members on the ruling council (excluding the leader), would it not make it fairer for a leader to require two or three members of the ruling council to confirm ministerial appointments as opposed to one? Although the originally one confirmation was a good failsafe against unwanted oligarchy when there were three members, now with five members it is easy for a leader to get his or her way simply with a single member of the ruling council, even if the vast majority of the council disagree. Though you could argue this situation was exactly the same when there were only three on the council, if you include the leader of the city really there was (assuming two oppose the appointment) 2:2 in favour. Now a leader could get away with 2:4.

One could also argue that there is no need for this concept to be encoded anyway and for simple politics to rule instead, but if this were so why was the original concept of requiring confirmation from a member of the ruling council introduced in the first place?

EDIT:

On retrospect this is probably more a discussion than a new idea. I'll leave the decision on whether to move or not up to a friendly moderator.

At the same time, removing a ruling member takes 3 votes, which is no longer even a majority.

Yeah the numbers should be upped.

I never understood why the leader even needs confirmation for their ministers. To prevent abuse? If a city/commune leader wanted to abuse they would simply do it themselves since they have all ministry powers anyway. I always figured the leader as a sort of administrator of the city/commune on top of being a council member.

And seeing some guilds with very inactive leadership I think it is a bad idea to up the needed people to outs a guildmaster.

To an extent I agree, but if this was the case then why is there a ruling council in the first place? If the leader was designed to be able to rule without one then I think it is a bit pointless for there to be an encoded one. Of course there is a political reason to have a 'ruling council' of elders, but this could have done just as easily by giving each commune/city something similar to a clan, and then let them roleplay it, and not bother with this business of requiring votes from council members to do certain things.

Yes if a city/commune leader wanted to abuse they could do everything themselves, but it is very unlikely I think; a) practically and, b ) it would be easier for them politically to try and fill up the ministerial posts with their buddies.



Yes there is a little inactive leadership out there, but does this outweigh the fact that, as Xenthos points out, you don't even need a majority of a democratically ruling council to eject a guildmaster from a city/commune? As it stands, the system is prone to abuse from an elected minority as opposed to an elected majority. The needed numbers of votes should be upped across the spectrum.

A council is more or less a law making organ as well as a supervising/judicial organ. Ministers are an executionary power and (in most orgs) can not change their policies without the council approving. The biggest role of the council is RP. Let us not forget that a City/Commune leader is the most democratic elected person in an org. Especially with the vote weight this person is elected by all your citizens. Unlike guild leaders who are often elected by a -minority- of a guild (gr3+) from an even smaller group (gr5+), this is not even taking in account that some guilds have so little activity that by all rights they should not even have representation.

And this is why when some Serenwilders tell me 'the commune leader stands below the guild leaders' I am fairly amused.


a) eh, you have any idea how easy it is for a CL to steal? The only person that can stop them is the Patron. This not like the CL will expect to stay CL when he is stealing, and doing it through ministers requires you to have atleast 3 to do real damaging forms of theft.
Filling ministry positions with buddies has no real effect (besides the aides are buddies of the ministers more often then not and they have many of the harmful powers), they are administrative duties and if they do not do them right your citizenry will punish you as leader for it. (in an ideal world anyway)

And to what Xenthos pointed out, is not a -minority- 3/6 is not a minority, it is half. And if people start removing others for such reasons you will soon see divine intervention.

Perhaps they should introduce a voting system where the leader can decide something and to counter it the guilds will need to 2/3rd vote to counter him. Only the catch is the voting being weighted as followed.

Add all guild member voting weights and create a percentage of representation in the city, and that is the guild voting weight

(I am not really serious about this, as it would ruin the power of many GMs)

I think the only change currently needed is that they should drop the requirements to run and vote for guildleadership, with the vote weight introduced it should be less likely that people will just make newbs to vote.

I thought what I pointed out is that it isn't a majority any longer. That seems to go against the original point (it did not start at 2/4, after all). At minimum, it should be 4/6.

Emar mentioned minorities

And wether it was the original point is not really relevant to me. I think if they make guildleaders easier to contest in guilds (eg no restriction beyond full membership) then it would be fine to up the number, but as it is It would be fairly easy to get GM and never lose it in some guilds.

"Unlike guild leaders who are often elected by a -minority- of a guild (gr3+) from an even smaller group (gr5+)"
Well, this does seem to say that only GR5+ can contest, which is completely incorrect. The limit is GR3 for voting and contesting (which is 2 whole guildfavours from any of the guild leaders). Most guilds do have an advancement path to earn at least two favours. In the Ebonguard at least, I'd say we have a greater number of people GR3+ than we do below.

Hrm maybe it changed, in the past it was GR5 for running for guildmaster and GR3 for the others, or maybe it was just a guild rule I don't remember. And the guilds needing a hostile replacement of a GM do not tend ot have many active people capable of doing it as it are mainly guilds with very low activity.

That's known as a "guild rule".

Which are illegal, and have been for some time.

Aye. I recall it used to being that in the Serenguard you could only run for GM/GA if you were a Secretary (which were all GR5 once they got the position). It was made very clear in the game and on the forums that things like this were illegal. Now, the way we do it is "traditionally Great Chieftain/High Chief come from Chief stock, but all are welcome to run if they feel they are up to it". Then I post about how hard both positions are and how you shouldn't run for them if you aren't willing to do the work.

More proof of the tyrannical rule of Everiine.

I do, however, think that for CL the limit should be raised a bit higher. It's not like it's even hard to get CRs (well, at least not in Seren and probably Celest and Glom)