Because Lusternia supposedly gives players org control; players rightfully feel demeaned when the gods swoop in to invalidate their decisions. It reminds players that they have no real control over the game environment, and that's not fun; most role-playing games are about changing either the game environment, or changing the character's perspectives - Ideally both. Lusternia oftentimes tries to lock players out of the former, whilst making the latter uninteresting.
Why, exactly, do player organizations need the admin to tell them who to citizen?

I don't see why; gameplay seems to work fine without their direct intervention. They're there to support roleplay, not direct it.

Viravain had nothing to do with me joining Glomdoring, btw, I never even talked to her until afterwards.

Glomdoring no, Shadowdancers yes.

Just for reference, that was a transitional Viravain, not the old Viravain. Shayle was comparing old v. new, not the transitional one.

Unless something happened behind the scenes that I'm not aware of, then no, she didn't.

Honestly I think this issue would disappear almost entirely if there were simply more gods in general. If Serenwilde has a problem with Charune for instance, who are they going to get to replace him as patron? What about Glom and Vira?

Now what if there are three or four good and viable choices available? It wouldn't resolve all concerns but it'd help a lot.

Either I was lied to (wouldn't be the first time from her) or yes, something happened quietly behind the scenes. They who know can set the record straight if they so choose.

You shouldn't take that as a sign that they don't want you there, though. Shayle's said after the fact that she enjoys you in the guild.

I've got to further amend what I said earlier.

If it gets to a certain point the administration must step in, if there is an entrenched leadership issue. At what point in time it becomes that bad, after how many repititions, I can't say, if one person is working towards a goal, and the leadership is letting them slowly, after proving themselves, that'd be fine imo. Everything in moderation I guess.

I'm to much of a centrist for my own good.

Because they're interfering with the enjoyment of players? Because controlling player organizations is not, in fact, their 'perk'?
Narsrim isn't popular by any stretch of imagination. This is a statement of fact, not a personal attack. Is anyone seriously going to argue that a majority of the playerbase like Narsrim? If they did, he'd been let into the organization. I think that if Glomdoring wanted him in, he would have gotten in without Viravain's help; if Narsrim was being ostracized from the game, it was by his own actions. I don't see why the enjoyment of the players in Glomdoring had to be put below Narsrim's enjoyment of the game; I'd say it's because he's profitable for Lusternia, but even I am not that cynical.

Achaea? Elitist? What are you smoking?

Except, players never succeeded in getting rid of a bad patron. The solution is to make players capable of operating without one, rather than pretending we always have active patrons available - Because we don't.

I don't really care to join this arguement but this I have to comment on.

Don't bring up a GM's power in this, the way the Lusternian guilds are set up it's nearly impossible for a GM to sustain huge amounts of power in the Guild and City/Commune. In fact, it's even said that a GM has less involvement with the Guild compared to the Commune/City. The other two positions (GA and GC) have some powers that the GM cannot touch on, while the GM has powers the GA and GC cannot touch on. They have to work together and if one goes inactive, it's a problem. It's not like one of the others can just take over all the work and privileges of the other.

I'm not certain what you mean. If you have viable alternatives its not extraordinarily difficult to switch from a bad patron to a better patron.


While making it so players could do everything a patron could do would be interesting, its unlikely to ever happen. Increasing the number of choices for patron seems to be the most reasonable, practical and possible solution.

I know Raikogen personally tries to go against the will of Terentia because he thinks there's some kind of Terentian conspiracy to make New Celest an extension of Terentia's Order, and that he gets hashed out by the Terentians and the Even Bladed herself a lot. He does't like how that he can't have the Council decide anything without the Terentians looking over his shoulder and yelling out him if it goes against what they believe in. The protection of the lucidian for example. Maybe you didn't have problems Catarin because you're one of her order people thingies? And were you Grand Duchess when Terentia was around, or Hajamin? I kind of missed the latter portion of your reign.

...

I think I should've read the thread first... frak.

There are never viable alternatives.

Except, the game has never had enough Divine so that any org could switch patrons easily, nor has it ever had gods evenly distributed. Basically, your proposal is impossible unless the bar for becoming an admin is substantially lowered, and I believe it's quite obviously more than low enough.

Yea she is a bossy god, and if you notice, even though people aren't sitting here bashing her. The people who defend her are all in her Order.

But again its would be like if the majority of the government were Communists. Then even though the nation as a whole may not be Communist, the government would be only thinking what is best for their Communist needs and controlling everything in a communist fashion.

Same with Celest. Even though most of the citizens may not be Terentia followers, A large majority of the political leaders are. And thusly they do anything she tells them to do. If Elostian or Lyreth (sp) had enough followers in positions of high political power, maybe then people may not have to bow down to Terentia's bidding.

I applaud Raikogen for not bowing to her, and I am glad he disobeys her and thinks of the city as a whole. Just because a God wants something one way, does not mean that it has to be done their way. Especially if the person they are commanding to do something is not a follower of theirs. The only downside is that she can tell her people not to elect him into any position of power again, and have them replaced with someone more submissive to her ways.

Personally, when I was in Celest the place was basically run by Terentia.

When I had a noob alt in New Celest, I came across the following cityboard posts:

Leader: After discussion, the Star Council (or how do you call it) decided to put Lucidian Astrologers on the "allowed to kill" list, because their experiments on viscanti kids are merciless and inhumane.

Terentia: WTF??! Listen bub, they're the LIGHT, so you change the policy back or I'll kill ya!

Leader: *changes the policy back*

Form was slightly different, essence prevails.
Therefore, I believe that New Celest IS in fact run by Terentia.


(offtopic: Achaea introduced the House system because the guilds had so severe loops to jump through that barely any non-alt novice graduated. And after graduation, they had even more loops to jump to even reach higher than GR 1. And failure to accomplish most of these tests often resulted in FRIGGIN' KICKING OUT. That wasn't the case for all of them, but most more than others - Forestal and Church-centric guilds being an example. The House idea might be too drastic, because something like we have in Lusternia would be more prudent. But I still believe it is better now than how it was then)

Yeah the reason for autoclass was because the guilds' requirements had gotten ridiculous. When I first played Achaea the novice interview was have a description, a short history, and a health and mana vial. Then around two or three (RL) years later to graduate from novicehood on another character I had to have every type of herb, five types of vials, description, history, directions, as well as completing around a two hour interview.

On topic I do believe Gods shouldn't be imposing their will on mortals in an organization. For one thing if they are so high and mighty above mortals why do they stoop down and meddle in their business?

The interactions I had with gods when I was -not- GM were all quite fun. Elcyrion was the wise fatherly figure, Charune was the cool centaur dude, Lyreth was the quasi-big-brother-who-wore-nothing-but-a-loincloth type (you know you have that type of figure in your life), Elostian was the life-is-filled-with-mysteries guy. All happy.

After becoming GM of Cantors, though, and getting involved in politics, I realized just how fawning we have to be to gods. Not only are you constantly tripping over yourself not to insult a god and get zapped and kicked out of your organization, but all of your decisions have to be made following your city's/guild's patron, which unfortunately for me, was the same god.

I cite Cuber:

That, in my opinion, was a tad annoying, especially since she made no notice at the proposing of the law, and three members all flatly said they shouldn't be protected. We had a decent RP reason: Celest was getting too military, and, in the idea of spreading love and innocence, we had to cease the excruciating pain the viscanti children were going through in the hands of the lucidians.

Of course, after we got the 3 members needed for a majority (with 2 members not voting at all, not even dissenting), I posted the results, and Terentia promptly posted her reply. My response at first was "...wtf...", but then I start getting all of these complaints on TSC, and the two other members who voted for the law decide to up and CHANGE THEIR VOTES. One, to his credit, ended changing back to his original stance after he realized just how much of Celest is slave to his/her sword and twisted superego, but still, I think the fact that the Star Council vote was completely disregarded, that the Star Council members who weren't in Terentia's order were basically shouted out of office, and that a policy not completely out of our RP was declared utterly ridiculous should be a testament to the power of the gods in Lusty.

So, to my actual opinion of gods and their controls in cities: they should be there to provide some sense of rp direction (we can't have Mag going all lovey-dovey on us now, can we?), but yes, player leadership is player leadership, and thus players, not gods, should have the opportunity to make subtle changes to their organization's stances when they want to.

Thus, I completely agree with Anarias's statement:



There are different facets to each organization's general rp. Have a god represent each of them, and have them all be chums with each other, so the organization can switch between them depending on the player leadership.

You make the mistake of assuming that because Terentians disagree with certain policies and such that such disagreements are ordered by Terentia. I can understand how people might get the impression but honestly, from an OOC perspective with my character being as involved as one possibly can be in the inner workings of both Terentia's order and Celest, she does not dictate policy. You can continue to think she does but it would be an uninformed impression based on IC perspectives. Players caving to the will of a Divine of their own volition is not that god running things.

In the situations described thus far where Terentia took a stance on them, players were not in anyway forced to crumble. They did so of their own volition. Nor were Terentians ordered to savage the Council. They're quite capable of doing that on their own with glee. It was essentially a situation where the characters elected had managed to gain the ill will of several very strong personalities.

Now are Terentians a very influential, loud, often annoying force in the city? Of course they are. But don't equate Terentians with Terentia. In theory, yes, ICly she could order them to do something and they would likely obey. In reality, it doesn't happen.

Perhaps for the sake of this argument and to get to whatever point you're trying to make you could specify what exactly constitutes a god "Running an organization"? Might be easier to discuss it then.