I've heard complaints about how one factor that will prevent any other organizations from being opened is the sheer number of people needed to run any individual city. So, I thought I'd see if anything could be done to combine the responsibilities of several ministries into one. For example...

Combine Librarian and Culture
Combine Chancellor and Trade
Combine Treasurer and Steward
Delegate the duties of the Ambassador to the guilds

This would lower the number of members needed by four at the least, and other changes could be suggested.

Any thoughts?

Also...please no tangents on other factors that will prevent organizations from opening up...I want this to JUST be about the potential of lowering the number of people required to run a city/commune.

Why Librarian and Culture in that? The Library is really a heck of a lot of work and if the Culture Minister is doing their job, so is Culture. If your Culture Minister is bored, replace him/her for not doing the job properly.

The same can be said for most of the 'pairings' suggested above, IMHO.

The ambassador frequently has work that doesn't make sense delegated to guilds.
Treasury and steward are deliberately made different so it takes 2 people to steal all the moneys.

Personally, I think things are fine as they are. Having lots of Ministry jobs, I think, allows lots of people to have a hand in the city/commune's government who might not ever otherwise. It's easier for a tiny group of people to keep hold of a tiny group of positions when there aren't term limits and so on. But with a wide variety of them, folks are more likely to come and go at some point, letting others give it a try.

Well, Nariah actually IS both Librarian and Culture Minister, which is one reason I combined the two.

Nariah is superwoman though.

Erm you do NOT need to appoint different individuals for this. The only positions that you can not hold two of are elected ones in guild and city.

For example it would be perfectly possible for the minister of power and the ambassador to be held by the same person. IF an org decides that one person can do all positions than even that is possible.

So why touch the flexibility if possibilities to combine this stuff already exists.

You know, despite the idea getting thoroughly shot down I'm glad that it got a response at all.

Treasurer and Steward really can be combined...steward by himself has a little bit more than no work, and treasurer just has to go in every month or two and allocate stuff around. Nydekion and I aide each other to the other's ministry, and I swear, I'm finding it 10x easier than even chancellory...

Plus, if you put in a rule about how you can't be an aide to steward + treasurer + culture or ambassador or trade (I think), you should be fine from stealing

I don't think it's the aides that people think will steal, but the Steward or Treasurer themselves. Having two people to handle all that gold is smart, though the person who is Treasurer could easily handle the responsibilities of Steward, and vice versa.

A confirming system will solve that.

If it needs to be confirmed you might as well remove the minister and let the council do it directly. (The leader can anyway)

The complaint isn't generally with ministries, but with all the guilds. For every new guild that gets released, that makes one more GM (another seat on the Council), another GA, and another GC at the least, not to mention secretaries and more to help run the damn thing. This is why some people have been saying that instead of opening separate bard and monk guilds, we should have made music a separate spec for mages/druids to choose and kata a separate spec for warriors to choose. A bit late for that now, however. I think that when the time comes for another "new guild", people will not want new guilds, but still want new "archetypes", just merged with existing guilds so as to minimize the expansion of the tree of hierarchy (and if the two sides diverge enough and grow big enough, then and MAYBE then should they split into two guilds).

Reducing the number of ministers won't accomplish much of anything. These are positions that are relatively easy to fill in. It's the increased number of true elected guild seats that really make life more a hassle, and require quite a bit more work and effort than ministries.

bolded part made me lol.

Power ministers are special cases, depending on the dedication of the minister. And while you could point out that a good power minister does more work than a lazy GM, I could just as easily point out that a mediocre power minister does less work than a good GM.

how about librarian and culture minister. People do not even notice when their GM goes inactive (or care until they need something). That says a lot. This is not to say there are no dedicated GM, but the average GM is not very active compared to some ministries.

Just to clarify this point since it's being used pro this idea. I am filling in for culture temporarily till we decide whom to appoint properly, and till that time we needed someone doing the theater stuff which I took onto myself to handle since no one else did; and one cannot afford to lose this factor in a race for cultural centre. It's been often done in Mag, the one of the council being appointed as a temp just so someone does the duties/has privs and they're already considered 'trusted' people. So there you go.

Onto the topic itself, I don't think you can hope to combine the ministries with how heavy some of them are. I actually sit for hours and hours on Library stuff every IG year, editing works, getting back to authors, talking over revisions, checking up facts, copying over the works etc. If I were to be doing culture properly, I'd probably drop dead. Just as Librarian ends up having to come up with works to publish from thin air, so culture minister is expected to handle plays on top of events, activities, seminar groups (at least in Mag).

And sure, you could in theory get aides to handle the varied tasks but have you ever heard of an aide actually pulling their weight? It's really rare, people don't tend to get off their bum unless they actually have the title. No one wants to be doing that much with no recognition/power coming from it.

I sometimes wonder why I have aides, then I realize because I am forced to

Except Lendren, he is the best person you can have as an aide, GA, minister, soft toy and so on.

Power minister actually takes no more then 30 minutes of your time a day. But you need to be able to deal with a lot of insults.