I have no ideas off the top of my head, but I'm one hell of an enabler. Hop to it folks

Again? Didn't this happen already?

First, I think there needs to be clear cut rules about adopting. Newbies (true blue new) have been hounded and harassed by eager 'parents' who want to increase their family score. I truly wish there were a set time period before a new player can be adopted. This gives them a chance to get a feel for the game and what path they want to set on.

Secondly, I think that single parents ought to be a possibility here.

Third- Parents ought to have the option to reject an unwanted child. It wouldn't be instant but a process similar to the bloodline one. Maybe a month to make it official.

Fourth- It would be nice if somehow, all relatives could be included within the same family, in-laws as well. So if your kid marries out, they'd still be a part of their original family with access to FT. If this is already the case, excuse me.

There is a time period actually. You can't be adopted before you have I think it is 75 hours of game time under your belt.

And with single parents, include the possibility for adoptions without having both parents present. It can be difficult to organize a meet between mother, father and potential child at the same time. I've had that as a huge difficulty for all the kids I've considered. Instead, allow Mother or Father to consider, then allow OtherParent to confirm within a month to start the process.

Problems with the current family system might be...

Too many penalties for new families - lesser houses have very few ways of gaining family honour points at all, despite being subject to almost all the ways in which these can be lost. Scale penalties by size of the family, perhaps? One issue I mentioned before is that divorcing an inactive spouse costs 20 honour, yet remarrying an active one gains no honour, you'd have to adopt 2 children, adding 3 to the family just to cover the loss of 1 person... and the adoption process takes so long that all of this honour would decay naturally anyway.

Too few penalties for great houses, the top end numbers seem insurmountable, there is no way of challenging their status. The only real way to dethrone Talnara at this point would be to get people to renounce/rejoin/renounce/rejoin.

No benefits for actual active members of families. 3 inactive children >>> 1 incredibly active child that you have a rp relationship with... this stinks. (Consider factoring vote weight?)

Things that might be nice:
Being able to add older people to a family in some other way than a marriage that doesn't suit role-play or bloodlining to progenitors who may no longer be active. My RL family clan includes an Aunt Janet, who is in no way actually related to us, yet we regard her as closely as any other family member, by mutual consent. I really wish we had this here!

There is a play time minimum.

The problem with families is half bugs, and half design. It's nearly impossible to become the top family given the trivial passive and active honour gains currently. My family has won or done nearly everything possible (including having more passive gain than any other family) yet I have no hope really of gaining the most noble family honour.

Family honour is a joke.

Easy to lose. Hard to gain.

Start with fixing that god awful mess of a system and most family issues will be settled. Then reset the family honour points to 0 for everyone and consider doing that once every RL 6 months anyways. At this point there could be no Talnara in elected seats for RL months and nobody would come come close to catching up to them.

Going off of Gregori's idea of resetting points to 0 every X month(s), perhaps give something special to the great family (or their org) who had the most honour at the end of the time?

Considering there is only one elected Mes'ard, I agree, it would take a while.

I would love some way to do something with my little inactive family that doesn't involve just ditching them; I'm the only active member in it, so it can't really grow.

If I could do a minor-pledge or some such to another family that gave even 1/4 of the active member weight (down to a minimum of 1) and let me join the FT (essentially, a coded way to do what Talan was suggesting with 'friends of the family'), I'd be pretty happy, given that I'm not ever going to really be in a position to participate in the overall family system otherwise.

There could be all elected mes'ards or all eletced anyone else in another org and they wouldn't come close to Talnara. Try to grow up a little and keep your petty remarks out of the conversation. It has nothing at all to do with my character that I don't even play anymore and could care less about the family for.

Isn't this what a Bannar houses of a family suppose to do? or is that part of the family tree just there to fill up space?

Banner houses require at least 25 active members, at which point your family is much more unlikely to be totally inactive.

Mine's got 6 'active' members (counting myself), of which only 1 actually logs in (me). Which leaves it as a pretty dead-end.

Theoretically if a family still has an active member it should be able to grow / do stuff, but it doesn't actually work that way.

But make it so if you're a single parent, it takes twice as long to consider a child?

Divorce and marry into a new family?

a real idea,

Be able to marry more than one person at a time?

I believe that my first post (which you quoted) accounted for that.

That would be... interesting, but I think it would really screw with family trees.

As antithesis it is to my nature, keep it civil please. I want the system to get fixed and hostile posts will not get that accomplished.

I do love the idea of resetting family honour and giving a bonus to the families that possess the most at the end of the period. Perhaps increase the rivalry between the houses... ways that we can actively plot against them, backstab them or even help raise their honour actively instead of passively. Being in the family whose RP history is politicking and sneaky plotting, I'd love to see more of this as a part of the family system.

How about we start with one, buddy. Just pick!