The more I think about this awesome new feature, the more upset I am with it.

Even if I could get all the treerippers active again, because we pretty much all started the game around the same time, we can't even actually be real family members, so despite the fact that we have many historically influenctial people, theres nothing we can get out of it. Fairly dissapointing actually. Its like IC reality is trumped by mechanics, very strange.

I am sure the same is true for other families in game.

edit: There needs to be some fare way of having brothers uncles cousins etc recreate thier families so that they are official...

Well.. Morgfyre did suggest it... so I was just wondering. Unless you're thinking of making it more general... that works too. I'm just hoping that if you DO make it a more general, that those who did the Historical GH stuff don't need to apply again.

Yeah, that's what sparked this whole desire for a family re-work. All this great house nonsense is just sidetracked from the original goal.....

The desire for great houses to have some actual value beyond being a clan was actually separate to some degree.

This great house "nonsense" has nothing to do your original goal (whatever that may have been).

As Fain said, it had nothing to do with it. It spawned from a discussion a bunch of us were having. I'm really pleased with it, though, and greatly look forward to it being used.

And since I haven't said it yet - Morg did a fantastic job.

OI

The first link in your thread is to my thread about changes to great houses which linked to veos thread so don't complain, it was your own fault for having "off-topic" links

Some possibilities would be unique family items (kind of like Order items, but one for a Family that would have to be approved by Admin, has a 100-day-or-so decay rate, and doesn't reset). People like their neat little unique items, and this is also something that is historically accurate as well with the RL Great Houses.

A unique "Head of Family" relic, that would be an artifact that resets to the head of the family (this is always going to be a very limited number), with some benefits on House members.

The ability to "Structure" the house, mechanically, with titles and the like if the family wants to (not required, but simply as an option). This would allow a Great House to give internal status based on lineage, or upon earnings, or whatever, and would give them the opportunity to distinguish themselves from one another in base setup.

I think the "Banner Houses" idea is a good one as well, with smaller families that can pledge themselves to a Great House, and they will essentially act as members of that Great House (or maybe half the effect) in terms of honour gain/loss for the Great House. Or, perhaps, even have banner Houses cause a small drain on Honour over time that the Banner House's members need to work to overcome.

Now, some uses for Honour that aren't an actual mechanical advantage (influencing, Seats on the council) might include such things as:
- The more Honour you have, the more Banner Houses can pledge to you (why would any small house pledge to a worthless little Great House that hasn't proved itself worthy of being followed?)
- The ability to "spend" honour (like gold) for improvements to the family manse, or perhaps even for the organization that they are tied to. Some special things could be created that require a certain amount of honour be required to purchase them along with gold and comms-- like a pole with the family Coat of Arms that doesn't count towards the total furniture in the room.
- The ability to "buy and sell" honour (at a loss, obviously, since the normal peon isn't going to fully buy it-- but it is possible for an extremely upstanding House to declare another House is worthy of some amount of recognition, raising the status of that House while also potentially somewhat injuring its own. In terms of mechanics, it would probably be a 1:.75 ratio or something.) A banner house being 15+ members, or 20+ members, or something of the sort, and would be automatically aligned with the Great House's choice of alignment (though they should be able to pick a patron of their own from that alignment's Pantheon, which would allow more Divine to be involved in the whole thing if they desire)
- With enough family honour, the ability to attain certain family-upgrades: A cartel slot for any tradeskill of choice, for example (maximum of one slot per tradeskill), which any member of the family has access to, the ability to appoint a specific person to manage the submissions, etc.
- (Someone is going to mention House Wars at some point, so might as well just mention it here-- a certain amount of Honour can be used to declare war on another great house, has to be mutual, some advantage for it, whatever. Not really all that important.)

Anyways, these are just some base ideas. Most of them are item-oriented thus far, but I think it's a pretty good framework to build off of without also having to give Influencing upgrades or having to deal with yet another vote on the Councils (there are already 7 votes, with only 3 required to oust any GM/CL, 2 to oust any elected guild official, etc).

FHELP files pleaaase. We have all of these logs of d'Murani interactions saved in an OOC clan, which is not appropriate when we have such an established family system, now.

How about making the most honourable house gain esteem faster when influencing? It wouldn't directly help them to win influence battles, but it would allow them to offer to their patron more.

Also, how about giving the house head the ability to turn up to five heirloom jewelry pieces into family heirlooms - making them permanent, giving them +5 charges and increasing their effect on prestige (clothing and jewelry prestige that is). The head can choose the five family members that are worth of being keepers of these heirlooms, and change them if necessary.

The asking for family re-working was basically motivated by what Daganev said - the desire to make official all those 'you're my child but we can't adopt you because game mechanics don't allow it' people. In RP, they're members of the family, but especially with this cool new great house stuff, it doesn't seem fair for them to be left out.

Otherwise, I like the flavour of the new houses RP.

Edit: Although, reduce the culture gain. 500 points is too much - that's as much as literary prestige, for goodness' sake!

I love this change so far, I'm sure it will have issues which will be resolved in time though.

I am however pleased with the count of 3 for the Silverwing family.

I can remember back to when I first started Lusternia, people asking for a Great House system that was interesting. Long before anyone had the numbers. Now that its here its being attacked pretty strongly right out of the gate.

Man we bitch alot, huh?

It's also as much as a *single* Domoth Sceptre (the easiest stage).

No wonder we complain about the power rewards of the Domoths...

*revives discussion*

Not sure if this has been asked before but:

Does aligning a Great House to a city/commune with the leaders accepting mean that you can appoint someone from the family to the ruling council or is there another step involved?

You need a lot of honour to do it. Which means no GH will be doing it for a long time.

I meant besides the honour involved, on the part of the city/commune. Do they need to approve of the appointment?

the GH can appoint at will

Then I think another approval must be made before a Great House is allowed to appoint anyone to the ruling council. Right now, organisations may not want to approve Great Houses being aligned because of the potential of them putting someone on the council. This limits the what the Great House can actually do, which I think is not the purpose of this system.

Orgs can do this already "You want to appoint who? Sorry, no. Pick someone else or we will remove you from being aligned to us."