Are you suuuuure? When I tried to bloodbond someone while Daedalion was inactive, I did not see that clause in there and was told I wasn't going to be able to do anything with him inactive.

I don't like the issues with bloodbonded progenitors, but it looks like you are looking into it, so I'll leave that be.

I am also having issues with looking for people to adopt while having an inactive spouse. For me, the problem has several layers, because in Glomdoring most of the reasonably aged options are all already married or inactive. If I divorce to marry someone else, there's no saying they too will drop into inactivity due to unforeseen circumstances and leave me where I was before, minus the time spent waiting to be allowed to marry. Then, to add insult to injury, divorcing will also drop the honour on my lesser house family, with very little opportunity to recover it. I don't know, I guess it'd be nice if, at the least, divorcing didn't drop honour if your spouse had been inactive for X number of days.

I know you said not to bring up the honour system, and just talk about the other parts of the system, but really... most of it isn't horrifically bad on its own, and only gets ugly when you bring the honour system into the equation. It's pretty unfun and ridiculously inflexible as it currently exists.

When the best option is to not participate anymore, you need to fix something.

This, for all reasons cited.

As for the adoption option, I'm not asking for a separate mechanism or any reduced or easier-to-break commitments. An adopted kid would function in all the same ways mechanically as a kid born into the family. The only difference would be the entry on FAMILY documents.

My reason for asking for an ability that grants a married parent the ability to adopt is because I run into the problem of a sporadically active wife. It would be nice if inactivity did not prevent adoption without requiring a divorce.

There is atleast one case of, accidental, incest.




so... no, we can't gain honour from marrying children out?



It doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination. The current family system (which as one of the people who was active in the threads asking for the original changes) is far from what was desired from the change from the original where great house gave you... a channel and a news board.

I ask, if Great Houses are competitive then why is it that the Talnara have not been removed from their position at the top since attaining it? Even if you converted all of the negative honour to positive and combined the numbers from every great and lesser house you are still not close to removing them from the top.

How much work would the houses have to do to even get close?

This is the biggest complaint about the family system. Unless it is made to actually be competitive I see absolutely no point in viewing the Starleaf, or any other, family as anything more than a casual rp device and free clan.

Seriously, until this was brought up again I had effectively forgotten that honour exists and that there was more to families than checking fwho and lol'ing on ft.



No offence, but I really think this is coming from the adamant refusal to change it into something that players can actually participate in.

The current system effectively requires at minimum:
-Nepotism with regards to elections
-All members in a single org
-All members to be of one faith (lesser issue)
-Farming of novices
-Refusal of requests to marry out
-Non-participation in some cases of defence or raids (unless there is someone around to enemy every participant even if you happen to be raiding)

Allowing lessened honour to feed back to a birth family after marrying out, means that:
-Allowing such becomes less undesirable.
-Families can marry their children out into a variety of more influential families, accruing honour over time to rise rather than fading into nothingness.
-If a form of honour dowry is included, then marrying your child into an influential family for the honour may actually be a good idea for a family with few members. (such should be along the lines of... a base pool of honour for marriage splits between two houses, the lower house gets a greater share dependent on the difference between their honour)



Err, couldn't you effectively copy paste the code for bloodbonding new siblings?

It's... exactly what people are asking for.



Again, sorry if this comes of as rude or the like. I heart lusternia, I bring it up in every day conversation.

But this feels like a case of the admin stating their goal and then implementing or defending a system that fails to come close to achieving it.

Saran basically hit the nail on the head here.

I understand that the family system has some appeal with its competitiveness, and it may be designed to foster that, but to be totally realistic, maybe 80% or so of the game's families do not want to play with Magnagoran Noble House-style RP. Most of us just want to expand our social horizons, have children and enjoy the game. Parents want their kids to go wherever they wish without them essentially disappearing from the family tree altogether for marrying out. Children hate restrictions on marrying out of the family. Players just want their cool character to marry other cool characters.

It's another number game. Number games are fine, but some people would rather just enjoy the social aspect instead.

I think what estarra is saying is that if you wish to aim for the social aspect, there is nothing preventing you from doing so, you just won't be able to become an Honourable Great House while having family members throughout all organisations. If you want to have a low profile family that is basically just friends from different cities, that's fine. You can even roleplay an alliance of houses by just merging your family clans into one (most efficient families start out as a clan anyway). On paper you will be a member of XYZ family, but there are no laws preventing you from staying in the other family clan.

I'm not sure that came out right, but I guess what I am saying is that while the points brought up here are valid, the goal of the Family System as Estarra envisions it is a competitive, cuthroat, power-grabbing, isolationist, roleplay-heavy system that you will not be able to succeed in (i.e. becoming an honourable great house with major influence in your alligned city) if you don't comply to the standards. If you don't want to comply to the standards, there's no one forcing you to play the game by those rules, you simply won't become an honourable great house and will have to cover the deficit of people marrying out of your family by means of a family clan.

Unless the points reset, or have a limited time until they reset, the chance of overtaking Talnara is minimal at best.

I think it should reset every few IG years, that would add to the competitive nature a lot, it would be on par of competing for Cultural Centre, the winner gets an added perk. Yeah, it probably will be one sided for awhile, that's generally how things work in Lusternia, someone gets ahead and they stay ahead until they lose interest/people go inactive/people switch sides.

I know it's not what you're looking for right now.

But why would you? That's barmy.

P.S. I want to know about this incest.

Was Gregori and.. Aiyana?

Gregori being the founder of the Mes'ard, Aiyana being a Talnara, Aiyana married into the Mes'ard but Gregori was her several-great grandfather?

Aramel and Lehki are both Sarans children, they'e both married into the Talnara and are elected leaders in their guild. It's not impossible to imagine something like "Oh yeah, Aramel. She's from that Mes'ard family, her brother is the Heir of Glinshari."

If this system is meant to be public opinion, then when a child from a less well known family marries one from a more well known family then wouldn't people start talking about the lesser house more than they would the greater?




Eamon and Seraphia are a more direct but accidental case resulting from the ability to bloodbond.

EDIT: The second post is probably because the relation is so far that family relation doesn't show it. Which is why oldies getting married can be awkward.

I feel the need to point to a dictionary or the like regarding the meaning of competition.

- How is holding an elected seat working towards this ideal? Yes, definitely suits gaining honour but really? All is does is reward people for voting with their clique.

- How is offering to a god working towards this ideal? Why are gods even involved? Sure if we had received some of the ideas that we had included in the original suggestions they'd be needed, but in this it's just another way to punish people who want diversity. (Is is ironic that this particular part of the system actually works against the idea of trying to spread your family influence far and wide?)

- Village influencing might make your aligned org like you more but really it's rewarding you for simply participating in a part of the game most people are expected to.

- There are multiple facets of Lusternia that are not even included in this. The library and theatre systems are ignored according to this list, Epic Quests are also omitted... well Questing at all really which is rather mind boggling when you consider that this system rewards bashing and influencing.

I could go on but it's late and the complaints about family honour have not been listened to in years. I dislike that this thread has been brought up, it is reminding me of one of the greatest failures of this game after I was able to happy ignore the bane upon lusternia that is its existence in it's current state.

I suspect a lot of these points, which I support, are going to be ignored, since at this point we're only supposed to be discussing marriage and adoption issues.

Most of the marriage/adoption issues are also being ignored (well, not ignored, but dismissed), so you should probably just stick to only trying to bring up things that haven't been brought up before if you want to contribute.

Oh, that's not really incest. Most countries' prohibited degrees of relationship stop at grandfather or great-grandfather.

Oh I know, but when it was occuring everyone kept going on and on and on about it!

You've made a lot of points on this thread and I can see where you're coming from; but it's not really where I'm coming from. We're not on the same roleplay page (and I am quite sure I'm not on the same roleplay page as the decision makers in this area either - probably quite some way the otherside of them). And some of that may be org based:

- So, I'd expect nepotism with regards to elections as good roleplay in Magnagora (except perhaps when you're conspiring to ruin your family's honour-income so as to unseat the family ruler).

- I'd expect all members in a single org as an absolute minimum. I find the proliferation of Magnagoran great house members in Glomdoring extremely irritating. I think in a happy Fain-world there would be a mechanic like the one we have in orders - there should be an honour drain for every traitor which your family hasn't wholly disowned. After all, your family's influence and standing amongst the nobility is going to be taking a fairly hefty plummet if the family's oligarchs are acting for an enemy power.

- I'm sort of semi- with you on the faith point. I like the idea of patronage, but I don't really see why the private act of personal faith should affect a family's standing; although, I do see why public demonstrations of piety and divine reciprocity might affect it - and I can see viscanti houses forcing son number two or three into the priesthood, or sacrificing a few daughters to life in a nunnery to demonstrate appropriate faith.

- I don't like farming of novices particularly, but I have a sense that this is curtailed to a degree by the hard coded minimum time requirement for adoption. Plus, there's a balance to be struck here: being a great house is great, but filling your great house with idiots becomes exceptionally frustrating when they stop toeing the party line and.. say... move to Glomdoring or screw up.

And I don't agree with the point in the quote above. If Jane Montague marries Joe Capulet and she subsequently becomes Princess of fair Verona, that doesn't reflect well on the Montagues at all well. In fact, it was a big up yours that she left in the first place. If the Montagues marry Jane off to one of their crony families - think banner house - then there's a degree of reflected glory to bask in. And that's reflected in our system. (There's more to say on this particular point: I haven't nearly covered the bases, but I need to get back to work.)

But in conclusion, it seems to me that a lot of the objections to the family system as it stands may well come down to being idealogical roleplay differences. The sort of family rp I want to see in Magnagora isn't anything close to the hippy tree-hugger free-love mentality* that Serenwilde advocates. In Mag, families are political powers in their own right with shifting alliances and important political interests. In Serenwilde, not so much. Estarra has to find a middle ground. And whether that middle ground is Acknor or Toronada, there will be people who are unhappy. That's the problem with taking the middle ground. You need the polar alternatives thrust in your face before you can appreciate the value of compromise. This is no criticism of you at all - I quite understand where you're coming from, but I think there are alternative views.

*forum rp

The bottom line, however, comes down to this:

We are not looking at the House System. We are solely looking for problems in the immediate family system (ie Gregori can marry three generations away to his granddaughter, but I can't marry my cousin four times removed; families founded by bloodbonding can bloodbond in extra progenitor siblings but families founded by marriage cannot; I think we should be able to start a consideration with one parent, but the timer doesn't start until the second parent does it, and they need to do it within 24 hours of the first).

We are not, again, looking at honour gain for gaining new members, honour gain for marriage, honour gain for influencing villages, honour gain for picking your nose, etc etc.

On the topic of incest, I don't see anything inherently wrong with it, so long as it's a given number of generations removed (but we'll need to look to make sure that's the case, and not just a bug with Gregori - and then, it's still Estarra's decision). That's very true to form and par for the course in a proper house (though then cousins tended to marry, but let's not get so squicky).

And the House system has a fair few lendings from the designs of the Imperial Great Houses of the Celestine Empire - all of which had a Patron Supernal (now Elder God for families in this age), a House Seat, etc.

Moving back on topic, would there be any consideration for government sanctioned marriages?

I never understood why orders and marriage had to be so closely connected in Lusternia, and never really felt there was a strong real world comparison - religion in lusternia is a far different animal in all the areas I've come up against it.

This is also problematic for orgs where the Divine are AWOL and the people with the power to wed are either sporadically active or gone. Having to go to some foreign divine/OH that you don't really respect just to get married, then forget about said divine seems... lame.

Leave the ability to marry with Orders, for those who want those sorts of weddings, but also give it to one of the ministry positions, maybe? I'm thinking Steward, since that one could always use more substance to flesh it out. Or maybe just CL.

I always thought that was kind of odd. People managed to get married for years sans-elder, why can't people get married by the state now? We must have forgotten...