Politics in Lusternia are reasonably flexible in that even 'rival' orgs have on occasion united against a common foe. That doesn't mean however, that Celest vs Magnagora, Gaudiguch vs Hallifax and Serenwilde vs Glomdoring aren't the natural axis of conflict.

I've never really liked the numbers game aspect of the Great House system. I like most of my interactions to be with a relatively small number of players, and I feel that with a great house, you lose the family 'feel'. I think most houses should be relatively small - several families of 4-5 with more ways to interact with each other is more interesting than 4-5 families of 40+.

The honour system is cool, but it seems like most of the great houses are in a state of dishonour, which suggests to me that there aren't enough incentives to participating in the system (you don't really need the seat on the council, since you've probably bred enough votes for you to be on the council in some form or another).

YES!

Also I am not sure if this is currently do-able but.. Children that get married before they find their parents.. take Nyxx for example.. she had no parents and then she Married Ayisdra and joined the Ysav'rai family. thats all fine and dandy.. yay Ysav'rai! however.... Eliron and Druken are considering adopting her but because she got married to my knowledge they cant... which makes no rp sense. just ebcuase i'm married doesnt suddenly mean I no longer have parents. there should be an option to consider parents while still keeping your married name.

I'm going to dare the wrath of Elostian and necro this thread!

The reason I am opening this thread is that we are again cautiously circling around the possibility of tweaking the family system. We are reviewing the posts here, with a focus on if there are small tweaks/fixes to be made to parenting and marriage. Feel free to consolidate what you think are the most important points!

Spouse for Casilu. Clearly needed for the system to function.

So be it! The thread shall live!

The problems I have had with it is that when I started to create my family, they were able to easily break off and join a larger family and leave me hanging. I have no idea how to fix the problem, but maybe...smaller families can willingly join into a larger family tree...Dunno.

Another, I love seeing family being integrated into it's city or commune! It is awesome...I know that in Celest, we have some royal families I would have loved to be part of, but alas, those families have...become unactive since those members have gone into slumber...How opposed would the administration be into allowing people to join these families and breathe life back into them? *Merian royalty!?*

As far as I'm aware, at current there are two Imperial Families in New Celest, in terms of active players. Those being Inalai and Shervalian.

If there was an interest in several individuals in joining the Shervalian family, we'd see what could be done towards those ends. I know we don't want it to die in obscurity. Inalai, however, is at least somewhat active and maintains members, so I don't think we're at that point yet.

(As for the other families, they can obviously apply for such - you'd speak with your org patron (AKA me) towards those ends. And I know a fair few have expressed interest to that end!)

Some of these are ideas I remember that were thrown around in this thread that I think would be great to the best of my recollection, some are fixes that I hope can be thrown in, and some are my own thoughts.

• More ways to gain honor for both Great and Banner Houses.
• Banner Houses should not lose as much honor as they do currently, due to it being harder for them to re-gain lost honor.
• Family types. Example: Combat, Artistic, Influencing, Political. Families can choose a certain type to focus on to gain honor, but still being able to gain and lose honor from other ways, just less so.
• Fix relations for people bloodbonded to Progenitors.
• Lower the numbers for Banner/Great House.
• Allow Banner Houses to connect to a org. Don't see much point in not allowing it myself.

All I can think up at this time, anyone who disagrees or wants to modify/add can do so.

FYI, let's focus on issues people may have with parenting and marriage rather than the family honour system. When you say "fix relations for people blondbonded to Progenitors", what does that mean?

Anyone who bloodbonds to a Progenitor who's already married is listed as a root member by marriage. Instead of the sibling of the Progenitor.

(I got all excited and didn't read it properly.)

Bloodbonding is bugged for progentitors, and even if you can game the bond (i.e. sometimes the other progenitor is needed, or even another sibling to be the one to second the bond to make it official) they don't show as siblings in FAMILY RELATION XXXX.

I think a good place to start would be deleting families with one or less active members. In the case of just one member, reserve the name for that person for an arbitrary amount of time, so they can refound it if they want. Family trees also need cleaned up. Someone divorced from a member who suicided shouldn't show up, for example. I'm not sure why divorced members need to show up at all, really. If they contributed at all, they'll be in the parents bracket on the kids.

I'll toss in my two cents on this.

Sylandra was bloodbonded into Skyplumes. When she rejected her family and made a new one, she was still not considered a sibling to her bloodbond-ees, because it's "by marriage." And she was "born" into her Silverwind family.

Now, time goes on, and Sylandra goes back to the Skyplumes.

Progenitors:
(A) Sylandra Skyplume

She's going to be marrying out, but her thing will forever say she was born into Silverwind and is part of Skyplume by marriage. Which is interestingly enough (to me) the opposite of what really happened.

Not really mad about it or anything, but what -is- bloodbonding exactly. It's advertised as finding siblings, but it acts like a weird marriage agreement thing, because no siblings are listed.

....

Also, give family aethers at ten members, not twenty, please?

One thing I would really like is for children with divorced parents to be able to choose which parent's family they want to stay with (i.e. last name). It would be a irreversible choice (or long time cooldown). So they're not forced to stay in the family of the person who proposed.

-Make it so people don't have to compete for family members. Possibly make it so people can be part of both their family and also the family of the person they marry (FT1 and FT2 perhaps)
-Make it possible to consider a child without needing both parents being there and agreeing.
-Lower threshold for Great House to 40.

Edit: Oh, I didn't see Estarra's post

I've had this continually bugged for probably a year or more IRL. It's sad that it's not even a known issue, apparently.

It's a known issue (it's simply a very large pain to fix, so it's been delayed until we attack the family system. It's one of several things on a list somewhere floating about Havens, likely on one of Kalikai's intoxicated belches - or Elostian; just, you know, in general floating about on Elostian).

Speaking on behalf of all of us with one-member families (Which are usually not the fault of the current one member):

No. Just, no. Don't even think about it.

Doing away with most of the mechanical benefits seems like a good place to start-- I don't want to have to be in a great house to get an influencing/debating perk, and as much as the 500p Talnara brings in passively helps keep Seren powerlogs from looking terribly awful, it needs to go as well.

On the same lines-- Cut the 'add a member to the ruling council' thing, or as soon as a family gets to that stage, they'll get ousted from the city by the council (Unless, of course, they already control the council, at which point it's a moot point).

Not losing your old family entirely when you marry also sounds like a good idea. (Maybe a FTS for Family-Tell-Spouse for the spouse's family?)

Honestly, I don't think what people are looking for is for families to play a bigger role-- the players just want a system that 'works' (lets you find relations, hold family events, have a family newsboard, that sort of thing), not a system that must be gamed. Families are a perfect example of an RP thing that most everybody is a part of-- if it was moved to be 100% RP (As opposed to the 80-20 split it is now, a la Talnara power/debate boost and/or Family Honour), it would make things more streamlined, and cut most of the complaints out.

Giving some sort of incentive (I like the idea of a boost (Power for the aligned org?) every six RL months or something like that for plotting/scheming/having lots of grandkids/etc) to do something with families could work, if a 'conflict system' must exist. But first and foremost, make it a system that fosters families, rather than Winning Org Momentum.

Again, let's limit the scope to the literal family mechanics themselves, involving parents/children/spouses/bloodbonding, and not the house system.