Or this could all just be fixed with trying to add banner houses into the equation. For example, I know there are a lot of small families in Glom that would never give into other, bigger families, and likely won't become a great house themselves. It would be better if houses could band together with some penalty.

I have no idea what banner houses or lesser houses mean to you guys.

Why can't houses affiliate with more than one org? There are a lot of d'Murani in Glom and we should get some of the cultural benefit for the work we do.

edit: @Esterra: Magnagora Great Houses have Banner Houses...like d'Lardick is a Banner House of d'Murani. They can bloodpact with a d'Murani and such. I'm not sure what they want other than a special line under FAMILY TREE D'MURANI that states the banner houses? Maybe the banner houses get a smaller boost than the Great House they serve?

While this is purely semantical I am also not fond of it being called the "Family Honour System" cause while a family may be prestigious, it is not necessarily honourable.

Don't worry, trying to steer Mes'ard towards you. Just have to convince 90% of Serenwilde to go with me

At first glance the Great House Council member position seems sort of scary, but it isn't that bad. The ruling council can exclude the person from their council clan if they don't want them involved, removing the responsibility and decision making power and giving them a title and some city privs. If the ruling council doesn't like the appointed family member, they can tell the family head to appoint another one or suffer having their family unaligned with the city. If that is too much of a blow to city culture, they can just uncitizen the ruling council member. Plus, the guilds elect an ass or two to the ruling council often enough, it isn't like the Great House system is going to suddenly upset the cultured and urbane ruling council tradition.

I think the system is pretty cool. I hope the admins will look into having prestige works, World Stage wins, and other stuff like that contribute to family honour as well. Nothing like having a renowned playwright or the Basin's foremost scholar on planar theory in the family, right?

More non-combat prestige for Great houses would be nice. Artisinals, bardics, published books, plays, what have you. I know in the Mes'ards, for one, it is not a huge fighting family, people are more inclined to scholarly pursuits than combat pursuits.

Er, I think you must be mistaken. There's no such thing as a banner house, at least supported in the code.

I'm not sure what everyone else means by banner/less houses. My interpretation (could be completely wrong) is gaining a lesser house status at 15-25 members or something like that. You can accumulate honour points along the same lines as the Great House honour system (but without being able to choose a family Patron), though with a cap or a greatly reduced point accumulation rate. These lesser houses could align themselves with a city/commune to give them a small culture bonus though not be able to gain the council seat.

Should a Lesser House desire, they could become a banner house to a Great House (upon the Great House's approval), which would instantly align them with the Great House's city/commune and maybe even their Patron. The Banner House would generate honour points for their Great House. Gains in honour would help the Great House in a small way, bringing shame on the Banner House would also shame the Great House it is aligned with for a small amount.

Right. The histories and help files mention banner houses. They're asking for one in the code.

While I kinda like the new changes and appreciate that the coders are working very hard to give us the players new features, trying to start a family from the ground was already near impossible because larger families just inhaled by sheer force of numbers, and now that there are many more (however minor) incentives to being in a big family, I fear that we're going to see maybe one freaking huge family that covers over 80% of the population in a given organization, or in the case of d'Murani, two organizations.

This really makes me sad.

The point of requesting that the family system be looked at was not to encourage more people to get into the same family, but rather make it easier for the system to officially acknowledge the massive amount of unofficial adoptions/family inclusions/whatever that make perfect sense, such as Tervic adopting Bellarin, which would have been completely possible by all mechanics save for I felt bad about asking her to break engagement for the third time. When I issue something like this to ask for a manual add, I basically (in nicer words) get told to shut up and go away, the system doesn't allow it. What (at the very least) my own personal goal was to make the code handle that silliness for me, so that the admins don't have to hear my pestering.

What these changes do is add more glitter and sparkle to the already established massive doom houses while not doing anything about the original problem.

EDIT: I think Arel's definition of banner/lesser houses is spot on.

That would be something you handle IC.

Yes please.

Well, what a banner house could functionally do is certainly debatable, but you really -have to- acknowledge that by putting the focus entirely on Great Houses, what are small families supposed to do? If a smaller family aligns itself with a bigger family, as I'm sure this sort of system would accomplish somehow, this would hopefully provide them with a lesser amount of, but some, influence, rather than being entirely insignificant. If we don't do anything to give some recognition to smaller houses, then I can wager a bet that quite soon, any important characters in the game will be one of the five-ish large families that there are (woo diversity/individuality!)

No. Mechanically, it's impossible to associate with two cities/communes.

Banner House is pretty much a Magnagoran term for a family considered a Great House but a minor one. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but we have Minor and Major Great Houses in Magnagora, the Minor ones would swear unto the Major ones and become their Banner Houses. Alternatively, they became Minor Great Houses by swearing their loyalty.

Historically, d'Murani have d'Lardick and y'Bolgari sworn to them, n'Kylbar has d'Vanecu and n'Rotri and i'Xiia has but n'Lochli. Those alliances would sway and change with time, for example y'Bolgari were a proper Major Great House at one point.

Now, what we mean by adding that to the equation is creating a system where there is a mechanic which besides creating a Great House when there's 50 active people in a family, creates a Minor House (Minor Great House, Lesser House, Mini House of Fun, whatever you call it) when the family reaches count of say 20-25 people.

I will try drafting a proposal of how that would work in a moment but for the time being I'll explain what we wish this to achieve. Minor Houses could participate in the family honours system and thus alleviate some of the problems mentioned. They would obviously have lesser powers and more restrictions BUT they would be able to participate which is all that counts.

Banner Houses system, on the other hand, could be coded alongside it where a Minor House could ally itself with a proper Great House and thus gain some additional honour points/influence whilst at the same time its actions, especially the dishonourable ones, would also influence/shame the Great House.

Edit: Very ninja'd, I'm slow!

Since a lot of people suggest that Great House requirements should be lowered and others insist they are unfair anyhow since long gone people still count for the total, I suggest to base the status of a family around honour points, to use that great addition, and only to a lesser extent on member count.

Family Status:

Normal Family (default)

Minor House
Gained upon the family reaching 15-25 people in size (perhaps unofficial till they gather some honour points)

Great House
Gained upon the family reaching 25-30 people in size and a lot of honour points. Either have very productive members or not so productive but many.

Most Honourable House
Is thus obviously a Great House with a great amount of honour points.

This shifts the focus from 'Newton farming' to 'quality' a bit, especially since member count won't be all that matters and more families will be able to participate.

Family Powers:

Minor House
--------------
FWHO
CONTEST
DISOWN
WELCOME

Great House
--------------
FT
PATRON
ALIGN WITH
APPOINT

Honour Points:

Just throwing out some ideas here for gaining/losing honour points.

Gaining Honour
------------------
Publishing a book, book weight defines the points
Book winning prestige
Directing a play, length defines the points
Play winnning World Stage
Placing in bardics and artisanals (a bit iffy about that one since it is semi IC, semi OOC)
Being elected a Trademaster
Being awarded a Guild Honour
Gaining a Quest Honour, points defined by importance maybe

Losing Honour
-----------------
Having your book successfully critiqued

Other
-------
Aligning a Great House requires 2-3 Council members to confirm it.
Appointing someone to the Council requires at least 3-4 Council members confirming it.
A city may only have one-two additional Council members.

Very Other
-------------
Confirming ministers etc should require more Council members!

Would the various honors for prestige, bardics, publishing etc. be retroactive?

Only if the culture points we should have been getting all those years for d'Murani's are.

Ditto for quest honours.

Sounds good to me.