Consilium Structure OOC

[Mark]

I thought giving the Counsilors the option to name provost let us have some one fill in when councilors were absent due to real life delays, but I can see how that gets tricky and being able to leave seats open and operate in absence of councilors is already in this charter so ...

-I'll edit that out, drop the 3 day detainment.
-Sentinels are already things, keeping the option of having sentinel position for now. work on wording of Justice and other Authorities and give it another few days of revising.

[Vincent]

There's also the fact that you're trying to force democracy in a setting where different orders have a different point of view on things.
Try talking to a Guardian or a Mystagogue about the virtues of democracy and the 1 head 1 vote principle.
Either way, it doesn't address the main issues with the Charter, case in point, look no further than the previous 3 Consilium threads.

[Mark]

Alright, let's start there. What is your main issue with the Charter. Mine is that it is too loose, it doesn't have any contingencies tied into it, it doesn't outline anyones responsibility or duties or their scope of power. RAW dictates a Consilium as a ruling council with a hierarch or a council dominated by an authoritative hierarch. The current charter fails to outline the duties and responsibilities of the Council and the Hierarch. It's not a matter of democracy. It's a ruling body. With the Hierarch ultimately making the decisions unless the council has enough support to counter him, checks and balances of power.

So what are your suggestions for fixing it so we don't waste another 3 months in Consilium threads? I just want a stable ruling body, so we can get on with plot and character development.

[Vincent]

My main problem with the Charter is that it doesn't account for people ignoring it alongside the setting to just do their stuff until the very last moment when they realize this kind of stuff is actually important. It's then and only then that they jump in with posts that could be declassed IC-wise as heckling.
Since we've been there more than once, heck, over the past two years I could say we've been there half a dozen times, the only suitable solution is a Charter-lite with safeguards to enforce adherence to the settince.
Since, and it's not the first time that I make my point of view known, some of us are here to play Mage: The Awakening.
Now, I understand that most of the time I might come off (IC and OOC) as caustic, but you can only repeat the same thing a limited amount of times before it becomes stale.
My two cents.

tl;dr: The current Charter has a shitload of flaws, but no matter how much of a perfect document we design, the most blatant problems are tied to the players and gameplay.

[Mark]

I get that. I like the duel arcane being in the charter. Disagree with your councilor, then remove him if you have the power.

With the power being inherent for the players. Consilium could then be moved to a private thread, councilor's only, players who, ideally, are there to play mage. Herald/recorder then drops an announcement post at the end of the month, this is what the council did. Characters that don't like that can take it up with their councilors.

[Xander]

I'd just stop making official concilium mandatory attendance. I told Casitive from day one I thought a mandatory thread in a venue that limits scenes on a site people come to roleplay where people are expected to sit silently was counter intuitive and not going to work. I think it doesn't work in part because people are forced to justify why their characters would be present but not say anything when something they disagree with is brought to their attention. Also making only trials private scenes that people can voice opinions through briefs or path meets ahead of time seems a good place to compromise and will lighten the load on concilium.

Second, I strongly disagree that the charter and concilium shouldn't be more democratic. The Lex and Tetragrammaton are artifacts and reconstructions of atlantean traditions that came about after the fall of atlantis. The Lex even has parts that are only valid because they have never been challenged. That means that canonically, the only place to represent the union of the Free Council to the Diamond is the charter and the manner concilium is conducted. Only one of the four diamond orders actually opposed the assembly's integration, so arguing that their beliefs shouldn't be included in the formation of documents that govern all five orders doesn't seem more faithful to canon to me. Technically, if we went all in on Mage lore the FC should be able to operate with some degree of autonomy from the concilium and something like half the active mages would be Free Councilors. It's not though, and we need to recognize and accommodate the compromise that some players need to make to portray what they can faithfully. We will never have a 100% accurate setting and we need to accept that, not use the charter to police our opinions of 'correct' gameplay. We are all here to play mage, it's more then just the politics, and acting like that desire is exclusive to certain players or play styles is just simply wrong.

I also genuinely think people overreact to other people trying to participate. If we didn't try to cram so much into one month we'd have more time for back and forth regardless of position titles or which threads we did it in. Exclusively hinging disagreement or disapproval of an official on arcana via the duel arcane just seems like another way to force silence and superficial cooperation into a still broken system of threads and rules.

[West]

...where people are expected to sit silently was counter intuitive and not going to work. I think it doesn't work in part because people are forced to justify why their characters would be present but not say anything when something they disagree with is brought to their attention.

The same people that said "Yeah I don't care, you be Councilor" ?

Because that's 99% of the problem. People want to have their cake and eat it, too. It's not a Mage thing. People want to skip the responsibility and the work, but then still be 'heard'. When half the people in the Consilium thread are saying or thinking "this is bullshit, why don't I have a vote, I disagree" when they didn't want to be a Councilor, that's a failure to understand how representative democracy works. It's not a failure of mandatory attendance. Mandatory attendance shows people the consequence of their actions/inaction and also makes the game an actual modicum of a community rather than a dozen solitaires all lone wolfing.

I can straight up say my OOC viewpoint is that if you didn't want to be Councilor, tough shit when you disagree with the Council. You got your vote -- you voted not to be able to vote.

Because ultimately someone has to make the decision or a consensus reached that isn't a dozen people arguing. Honestly? I haven't seen any real politics. I've seen Libertines doing the "I must disagree with The Man!" and Guardians doing the "Vulgar magic so bad!" stuff, but it's 99% been a lack of organization.

Vincent isn't wrong that most of these problems are OOC.
People don't read the source material.
People don't pay attention in the thread.
Then those people want to shit all over the people who did and are.

Random thoughts in no particular order:
- Remove the 'of the Councilors' requirement for Hierarch. Anyone can run for President. They didn't have to be a Congress member or Supreme Court Justice first. From a practical point of view, all this does is force one Path to re-select a backup.
- Just... stop with the mandatory Heralds and Sentinels and Full Body Masseuses. Change it to 'can have' not 'always will have'.
- Come up with a reasonable Tet that isn't copied from the book or another site. Arguing about innocence or guilt is one thing -- always having an equal headache of actual sentencing is fucking ridiculous and has been ever since the Tet was made.
- Ditch EVERYTHING about distinguishing between solitaires, cabals, and Orders.

But ultimately this will all continue to fail if the same OOC problems persist.

[Mark]

I disagree with a lot of the establishment about a lot of things, but I agree with West about everything he said. I chose some wording in this proposed charter because I thought it was an established opinion of the site. Hierarchy can be anybody I totally agree with, that’s why I wanted to at least give everyone an opinion. I don’t think herald should be mandatory, that’s why I worded it as an option. Sentinel I thought was required, what is a government without it’s army? But I’m down to try a world without it. I HATE our current tet. The tet is what inspired me take on this project. Fix the charter, fix the tet. I’ll be stream lining this down this week and trying again. I know my character is viewed a certain kinda way. But that’s kinda the cannon for a free council thyrsus. I’m very committed to being able to enjoy exploring the idea of Mage. And I’d like to make that exploration as smooth as possible for myself and those that will come after me.

[Xander]

Not all of us passed it over because we didn't care, and I disagree that people are being shit all over because of it.

In the case of the Mastigos Ty voiced an interest in the position and I wanted to volunteer as herald so I let him try it since I don't enjoy the political side of mage anyways. It seemed to me that a similar situation happened with the Thyrsus letting Mark stay in the position despite having a Master factotum on the path. My OOC opinion is that we shouldn't penalize people for trying to include newer players, which two of the five paths were/seemed to be doing. As long as more then one person is on the same path and has an opinion though, this format won't support them. That's a problem that goes back to Avis and Gyges (before he was provost) and isn't unique to the people who passed over the councilor position.

I agree that people need to read the thread (Stepping forward when called, etc.), the books, and the charter, but I have no power to gauge or affect that until it's happening. What I'm saying is to make the trials their own threads since they only come up every few years anyway. That'll lighten the load so we aren't trying to race through a laundry list of different issues. Shift the focus of concilium to a more interactive town hall kind of deal while the more involved information is reserved for side threads where things can be handled more expeditiously. I agree that we could organize the venue better, but we can't fix people. So why not try and structure the venue in a way that allows the more in depth stuff on the side and allows a more interactive gathering where those topics can be discussed at concilium?