Oath Discussion: Packages?

Discuss whether or not they're worth it here.

I like the stat packs. Not only do they give incentive to take the oath, but they also include a built in punishment for if you break the oath.

- Mae

While the packages are cool and sometimes nice, I think in all honesty, we should simplify the Oath. KISS all the way. (Keep It Simple Stupid!) The bonus should come in being part of the FREEHOLD itself as made plain in the books.

The oath itself isn't the problem. The problem are the laws. The Oath says that if you break laws, you break the oath. And the Laws, especially the 'honorable and honest conflict'-one is just stifling action, and it's also one of those corrupt things; the law suggests that conflicts must be brought up to the crown, but what is to say the crown is going to be honorable and not judge in favor of someone they like more?

This is why Brand has not joined the Freehold - she immediately saw the problem with this. She is also a Tolltaker knight so can't even join the Freehold based on that law alone. And you can bet that she won't let someone be a nasty conniving bitch to her in a social manner, without letting her use her skills to get back at them. The law just bans violence, but it doesn't say anything about all the other tricks a Lost can do. You can ruin someone without hitting them.

Fix the laws. Make the oath much more simple, and much more clear. The wording should leave no room for interpretation. Heck, Fealty and Banishment is clearly explained in the book, and that's the basis of a freehold oath. Swear to follow the laws, or be banished.

I half-agree with Brand and half-disagree. The packages aren't the problem. They're a minor issue, but if we're doing an overhaul, we might as well address the minor issues as well.

The packages are incentives, but they're also clutter. The same role could be served by pledges to entities subsidiary to the Freehold (like the Militia, where the physical package would come with membership in the Freehold's armed force).

This also addresses a concern I've heard a few times that the oath implies that any Freehold member has to jump to battle when they don't want to or can't (which, I suspect, is one reason why some people don't want to swear at all). It would make it so that the Freehold oath ensures that members are good and don't work against the Freehold, and for people who want to actively work in service of the Freehold, there would be organizations like the Militia or the Royal Guard or the Council. This lets us place more specific blessings and duties on the people in active service to the Freehold that would be unfeasible to put in the central pledge, like saying that Councilors must not take bribes or putting a harsh penalty on deserters from the Militia, and I think that a solution like this would be better for everyone involved.

Get rid of the bonuses for pledgint the freehold. Instead, let the courts have their own pledge that, more or less, does the same thing (common bonuses found among the people of the court, so like subterfuge and intimidate for Autumn). So, that way, it also /forces/ people to play with others from their own seasonal court.

I actually quite like Sammi's suggestion.

Make the main freehold oath stripped down the bear. Don't worry about different packages. Let the different freehold groups be the packages. In fact...

You can even keep the freehold oath itself as seasonal. Have the freehold groups pledges be year long with a task of reswearing each season. This encourages people to actually continue swearing the freehold pledge to get the benefits of special pledges, while allowing those who want to play more transitory characters to only pledge for a season.

It gives an illusion of "freedom" to those who value freedom above all else.

I like it too.

I'm thinking...

The Fealty/Banishment oath - it basically have what you need. You swear to aid the Freehold. Or you get banished.

Then the only law that actually matters, and which makes Crown work SO much easier is:

Do not aid the gentry or ally with them in any way.
Do not kill Lost of the Freehold.


That's it. If the Crown didn't have to worry about the petty little squabbles of its members, but actually let people have some responsibility on their own - in a totally non-democratic manner, but hey, it's not a democracy in the first place - it'd make things a lot easier.

But also, I kind of think discussing this OOC is a bit meta, especially if some people then ICly will present this as their IC idea. Unless this comes from NPC crowns as an edict and law and decision.

+1 duck

Olivia asked me to craft a sample SIMPLE freehold oath on the Pledge Fixing +job. Which I have done. I made it seasonal (even though I think it should be year long) as that is what most people are leaning to. This is what we have been discussing on that +job, and since we are now discussing it here - I thought I should share.

Type: Corporeal, Nemesis (Means it is up to the Monarch to enforce)
Task: Fealty (-3)
Boon: Vassalage (+3), Blessing: Empathy (+1) - makes it easier to understand and recognize the emotions of the dominate season
Sanction: Banishment (-3)
Duration: Season (+2)
Cost: 1 willpower

The words: I swear on this token (we already have that), that I am loyal to the Freehold of Darkwater and the Season's chosen liege. I agree to follow the dictates of the ruling monarch, so long as the monarchs laws and protection are applied fairly and equally to all who swear this oath. For my loyalty, may I be blessed with acceptance and understanding of the Season, and should I betray my freehold or my Lord, let me never walk safely in its streets again.

I don't like the idea of making "packages" Court-based. Courts already grant bonuses in the form of Mantle, Contracts, Courtmates to back each other up, Court holdings to use and Councilors to go to. I see no need to force people to play together; I think that trying to force people to RP with each other is entirely the wrong thing to do.

Instead, arranging bonuses by organizations lets us place emphasis on groups that may be lead by a particular Court (the Militia and Summer) but draw from multiple Courts. This is already present, but it feels like the Militia is largely comatose at the moment, with the external irregular company that is the Watch (which should be smaller and weaker) having all the people and energy. The Order of the Lighthouse is doing better, I think, but Carina just swore, so I'm not in on that yet. The Council is a different beast, but I think it should get counted for the same reason judges and legislators get sworn in in mortal government. I'd also like to see an official organization of researchers (which my latest Autumn may work to form once she's sworn).

I think my suggestion could easily be handed down or proposed by an NPC. Carina would have done it already except that she's in no position to make such suggestions about anything outside of the Watch.

I may have missed it but I don't think anyone suggested making it court based? I was suggesting make it freehold-group-thing. Like the militia, or the spygroup, or the infirmary, etc.

Alexander did, and I'm on my phone, which isn't the best idea for foruming, so I didn't quote his post like I should have.

Oh! I completely missed it. Woops.

I just had a chat with someone about the current oath and laws, and came to a few realizations that I think most of us have missed, me included.

1. Gwen didn't break the oath. Unless Kailin went up to the crown and complained and asked for arbitration, she didn't break a law. That law says quite clearly the crown won't do anything unless the offended party brings it up to the crown. If Kailin did not, she broke no law.

2. The Oath itself, having the wording about the I pledge that all grievances and disputes with my fellows shall be resolved in a manner both honorable and honest, for whatever our disagreements may be we are still as family. -this is totally pointless. It has no Task in the mechanics, and hence, is just word fluff. The only Task is the Fealty.

So. Yeah. This needs reworking for sure.

Right. I completely agree those need to be fixed.

Both the Oath and the rule concerning violence are being reworked, thankfully.

Brand wrote:

I just had a chat with someone about the current oath and laws, and came to a few realizations that I think most of us have missed, me included.

1. Gwen didn't break the oath. Unless Kailin went up to the crown and complained and asked for arbitration, she didn't break a law. That law says quite clearly the crown won't do anything unless the offended party brings it up to the crown. If Kailin did not, she broke no law.

2. The Oath itself, having the wording about the I pledge that all grievances and disputes with my fellows shall be resolved in a manner both honorable and honest, for whatever our disagreements may be we are still as family. -this is totally pointless. It has no Task in the mechanics, and hence, is just word fluff. The only Task is the Fealty.

So. Yeah. This needs reworking for sure.

he was questioned and has asked for restitution so it has been brought up.

My suggestion, and who the hell am I, is that the pledge to the freehold be a year, and the pledge be something rather 'frameworky' as opposed to specific.

The year because the stability it adds, not to mention it sucks if half the freehold flees the hold this season because they don't like who got the crown. Sometimes your favorite person isn't in power.. I think we all agree this has happened in politics, but you don't stop paying taxes and flee the country until your guy is back in charge...

You want to be able to fix things in an agile manner? Then pledge to LAW. I'll give a quick example:

I, Sugar, pledge to uphold the laws of the freehold, and fealty to the rulership of the freehold as per the framework of the law for a year and a day.


Law #1: How you make new laws, and get rid of old laws.

Law #2: Everybody has to wear orange all the time.

Now I'm pledged, by enaction of the second law, to wear orange all the time. We decide we don't like wearing orange, we use Law #1 to change the second law. It could be done in a single act overnight. We could make a laundry list of laws and things people in the freehold can do and can't do in a single afternoon if we wanted to, and if it didn't work out, change it to something else. It's even MORE agile than the 'oh, we fucked up, lets try a new pledge next season...' method. It's sort of how modern government works.

My two cents, as a newbie, there ya go.

This is tangentially related, and I'll probably start another topic on it to broaden the discussion, but I wanted to touch on it as it relates to the Oath.

I think, if the Oath is broken, the consequences should still be playable. Your PC should be punished. Bad things should happen. But those bad things shouldn't be an automatic expulsion from the game. That's not IC punishment. That's OOC punishment, and far too often those two concepts are treated as interchangeable.

The problem with banishment, imprisonment, etc. is if you step out of line, that's it. Your PC is gone. You lose your character. No more RP for you, just go.

Want to talk about stifling RP? What part of 'screw up and you're off the game' doesn't encompass that?

If banishment is the only reasonable IC option, make banishment somehow playable. Terrible, awful, horrible, bad for your PC -- but playable.

I think you'd have a lot fewer people huddling in private rooms with their cadre keeping their PrPs to themselves if we got away from the model that ICA=ICC actually means 'step out of line and you're outta here.' Playable consequences could be fun. Getting kicked off because you actually did something besides bar RP and it went south? Not so much.

I'm not saying we never banish or PK ever ever ever. That would be ridiculous. Sometimes a PC screws up so badly the backlash is permanent. But I kind of hate that OOC punishment is our go-to for IC mishap. It quells people taking risks, and we end up with stagnant, lackluster RP where nothing ever happens.

So, while this an entirely different topic to discuss elsewhere, I bring it up to point out that it would be really spiffy if we could look at crafting the Oath so to have IC punishments for breaking it that you actually got to play out instead of an OOC 'GTFO' when your character does a bad thing.

TickTock wrote:

This is tangentially related, and I'll probably start another topic on it to broaden the discussion, but I wanted to touch on it as it relates to the Oath.

Since I have a response to the post and don't want to derail this thread, I have made another thread.

EDIT: The forum skin doesn't format links any differently than normal text. We should look into getting that fixed. Until then, everybody should try to remember to emphasize their links.

I like the packages. It gave me OOC incentive to join. ICly, Elisa is just plain Freehold loyal. She doesn't see herself breaking the laws so she doesn't care about the pledge and she loves the idea of the Freehold.

The Oath is not the problem, clutter is not the problem..any oath with the Fealty task is going to have the same problems.

The problem is with our laws and how they are designed.

No matter how elegant and streamlined a pledge that demands fealty to broken laws is going to be a broken pledge.

Fix our way of doing things in regards to law, order and especially punishment and the pledge is just fine. Or, go ahead and fire up a more elegant, streamlined pledge; just ensure that the other stuff is fixed first.

The Law is in fact being attended to in addition to the Oath. Right now the one with primary focus is the law concerning violence/use of lethal force/attacking fellow freeholders.

I just think the original Pledge was pretty much a thinly veiled 'anti-nix law". I would like the players here to think big picture, maybe even get a little meta; so that we can make something that will be fun over the long term.

I would suggest something along the way of "eye for eye." If you take something from a freeholder the Crown will pledge you to suffering a loss of your own, poetically linked to your crime.

IE: Gwen wounded someone with her hands. She should loose the use of her hands (Maybe she has to wear bells over her hands, or she must keep them in her pocket for a lengthy period of time.

Or hell, maybe she should have to be Kailins butler for a while.

Stuff like that.

And actually banishment isn't so bad as it's written in the books. That kind of stuff may spice the game up a bit.