Consilium Structure OOC

[West]

Xander -- I was talking about every Consilium I've ever seen where new Councilors were selected. The first time we did it. When we switched to Orders. Back to Paths. Back to Orders. Back to Paths. Dismissed and reconvened, etc.

It's always the same.

One or two people get swept up in it. Another couple argue about it. The rest just roll their eyes and check out of it.

Then some of the people who didn't want to read pages and pages of arguing and revising will decide they want to bitch about it a month after it's ratified.

And I know you know I'm right because I know you've seen it at least twice now.

Slowly points to Mark writing pages.
Slowly points to Vincent and Woland weighing in, him and Xander arguing.
Slowly looks at everyone else being silent.

Also, I can't think of a single time when Sentinels were actually needed and not just an empty title that was occasionally fought over. Maybe I'm wrong tho.

[Mark]

Xander I get what your getting at. It’s like the end of a good Larp, where the staff is trying to get people to cooperate and share the information they discovered to progress the plot. But the same issue there is what we run into here. There are those who want to collaborate to tell a good story and those that are the reason Larping isn’t more popular. I think, what we need, is a way to satisfy the casuals, the plotters, and the immersers. Politics is something that falls squarely in the realm of immersion sadly.

[Xander]

West- I'm not trying to argue with anyone, right, wrong, or otherwise. I have an opinion that differs from yours and Vincent, and my question still remains of how do we address these differences in how we want to play mage. If the issue keeps coming up for different players with different toons at different times then how can we realistically alter the people who come to the site to participate? I made my suggestions for revisions in the last post, and I refuse to just say people don't care and move on. So why don't we shift the conversation back to what we can affect and talk about the charter and the concilium?

Mark-I'm hesitant to call people casuals for not wanting to participate in the drafting of the charter or parse through White Wolf's unique methods of organizing their content across multiple volumes without cross referencing it all. The concilium is one facet that I've always felt we spend to much time arguing over. It's definitely the most intricate, but there are reasons beyond intricacy for not finding it especially compelling. Saying certain people are the reason it's not more popular is only going to contract the venue back to single digit populations as those you make to feel unwelcome leave.

Also going to echo West that I've never once seen a sentinel prove a necessity to a scene or proceeding.

[Mark]

Whoa whoa whao

let's calm down and agree that we all want a dope setting to explore this cool concept.

Casuals is not an insult. There are people that just want to RP and play social characters (casuals) There are people that want to play a plot driven given. (The movie stars) and those that want an immersive story. None are better or worse than another, they are just people that are looking for different things from the same game.

So, the question is, how do we service all those people. First I think we recognize they all need different things from the story, but the through line is a stable environment to play in. I think that's what we all need, just a stable place to explore plot. It's not vampire, in my opinion, which is more about status and power at its core. To me, Mage is more Scooby-doo. Normal people with incredible powers solving great mysteries each week.

[Xander]

There are those who want to collaborate to tell a good story and those that are the reason Larping isn’t more popular.

Emphasis mine.

Fyi, I wasn't saying being a casual gamer is an insult. I was referring to this statement because it seemed to imply that, like in your hypothetical LARP, there are players in the venue making it less popular. That is one of the statements that seems fairly unwelcoming to me. We're on the same page about making a game for everyone, but as people say things that belittle other players as this thread has been doing again and again it's going to alienate people.

Which is all I'm saying.

[Yumyumcrow]

Question:

Do we need a Consilium?

I only thought of (trying) to rebuild a Consilium because that is the default.

We could have a very lite Assembly that kept to the basics:
- An acceptance of the Pentacle (and Atlantean traditions, loosely speaking) as well as the Orders (so no one is left out)
- An acceptance of Apostates
- Against the Seers of the Throne, the Mad, and the Scelesti
- Circle of Creation as a general meeting space / place for Orders
- Flat leadership unless a plot situation called for something more structured

That way, there is a rough 'frame' in place and everyone can go about their business: plot or social as they like.

[Stray]

I am predominantly a VtR player, as most of you know, and I don't have any active toons in Mage (though I have one pending). So take this as you will, but I figured I'd shoot a few thoughts here for consideration:

One thing that I think we all seem to be in agreement with is the fact that a more traditional formula of the Council and other offices won't work for our venue because of of our limited player base. Therefore, I think it's safe to assume that removing certain offices from mandatory assignment (Herald and Sentinel for example) while also allowing the Council or Consilium as a whole to elect the next Hierarch from the entire body rather than just the Council is a step in the right direction. Until a time comes that the player base increases, it is best in my opinion to go down that route, as it makes sense (to me at least) that a smaller Consilium would have Councilors with a more intimate relationship with those they represent (thereby allowing the Councilors to serve as their own voice and relay the decisions of the Council to the rest of the Consilium).

However, let's not forget that Mage is more strict than other venues in a lot of areas by design. Politics may not be the centerpiece of Mage, but to say that it should be dulled down because people think that the Consilium's mandatory meetings are unfair or the system is to complex would be counter productive to the play Mage is supposed to foster. Mages have to live by very strict guidelines because there are very real issues that happen when they expose themselves. A Vampire let's a discipline slip in front of a mortal witness? No problem, roll up a plot to deal with the issue and possibly kill the Kine involved. Uratha wolfs out? Lunacy often makes people forget what happened. However, if a mage screws up a literal entity can manifest and wreck shit. The issue becomes a huge cleanup at best, a global catastrophe at worst, and with every such manifestation the ties between the Fallen and the Supernal Worlds becomes weaker.

The Council is a necessary aspect of the game because MtA revolves around a lot of investigation, paranoia, and supernatural cleanup. So let's consider some OOC solutions:

- People don't want to clog their scene log. Cool. How about we still make appropriate Consilium scenes"mandatory" and still have toons at least post their entrances so that we can tally who is active and who is not. Additionally, establish the expectation that the players need to keep themselves informed about the Council's decisions. By enforcing at least a mandatory entrance, they don't have an excuse not to, as their character is in the scene. Once entrances are done, the post order resets to include the Hierarch, the Councilors, and those Mages involved directly with the meeting's proceedings (such as the accused in the case of a Trial). This doesn't bar others from chiming in, but it does mean they are interrupting and can be dealt with appropriately per the modus operandi of Council etiquettes. This is not ideal, as players can choose to ignore the Consilium thread, but it's at least something of a workaround to enforce some expectation of paying attention to scenes.

- Don't include Consilium scenes as "active scenes", thereby allowing toons less interested in Council proceedings to take on the scenes they want, as they are largely rendered silent in Council threads unless they are a Councilor. Thus, a necessary aspect of the venue is preserved and people can't say they feel confined by scene limits.

- "It's unfair that I can't share what my character thinks about X that gets presented to the Council." No, it isn't. You have the opportunity to select your Councilor and the Council is ruled via representative delegates. It is up to your toon to ensure that your Councilor continues to voice your interests. If they don't, advance and try and replace them. That's just how the game is played.

However, if you all don't want the traditional structure, you can go wild west. A lot of players will not like this. Without a charter and a Council to enforce its guidelines, certain factions will not be bound by laws to prevent them from acting against your toon. A lot of PvP will result. Guardians can incarcerate without objection, Arrows can go after anyone they see as a threat to the Awakened, and Mystagogues can research dangerous lore without the involvement of other factions to check and balance them. The end result is less new players will stick around, as they will not be able to compete well enough with older toons that have been through the paces for a long while.

TL;DR? Mage is complex and strict by design. The Council is a necessary thing and I think it's important for the site that the Charter is rewritten to reflect a smaller population. THere also needs to be an expectation for players keep themselves informed on Council happenings and to have an understanding of the source material (including Mage Laws). There are alternatives to the Council system, but many players may not like it as much as they think they will.

Edit: I do like YYC's suggestion. I guess a traditional Council may not be precisely needed, but an established Assembly of leaders is necessary. As is adherence to some semblance of a system of punishment should Mages screw up.

[West]

I was referring to this statement because it seemed to imply that, like in your hypothetical LARP, there are players in the venue making it less popular.

Sure, but likewise saying 'Mage isn't just politics' over and over is low-key indicting everyone remotely interested in a hierarchy -- because let's be honest. This isn't about 'politics'. It's about a modicum of structure.

I am vehemently against 'Assembly Lite'. If half the game were FC*, fine, we could talk about it. But it's not, and thus every single Diamond member (the majority) has to come up with an IC rationale for why they're going along with this. Stray is right. There's a structure to Mage. There are customs and power structures and if asking some people to ignore theirs begs the question of why we don't do away with ALL the structure and play a game without any Orders at all. At least that would be fair.

I don't like the idea of punishing people who want to drill down into the lore because some people don't like to read. That's fucked up. Nobody goes to church and stands up in the middle of the sermon and starts yelling. Because here's the thing. Joining a game is agreeing to a social contract to respect the setting.

If you don't like the setting, don't play.

It's no secret that I've NEVER subscribed to the 'all are welcome' mentality. Fuck that. I'd rather play a good game with a handful of people than a shitty game with a lot a people.

* Or ever had been

[West]

It is, however, an observable fact that the Charter currently in effect and the Charter proposed in this thread, while they aim to pay homage to the more structured side of Mage and to the hows and whys of its hierarchy, fail spectacularly in this regard. We've all seen the chaos of last Consilium.

And this totally lays it at the feet of the documents and overlooks that the vast majority of the failure was player failure, which I pointed out.

Campanella asked five Councilors to step forward.
Three did.
Of those three, one left mid-scene.
A fourth Councilor joined later, which of course led to confusion and also a discussion of interpretation that never would have happened if they'd just stepped up at the beginning.

This is all OOC player problem. This isn't a problem with how Councilors are selected. This isn't a problem with how Consilium operates. I'm not trying to beat a dead horse and shame anyone but to say there was a spectacular fail that lies solely with the Charter isn't right. Unless I'm mistaken the only failures of the Charter were in the ambiguous language of the Hierarch selection which I chose to exploit in character for in character reasons.

I'll bet XP no one noticed that singular detail until I pointed it out.

That's all a very long-winded way of saying that the Charter doesn't need to be rewritten entirely. It definitely doesn't need to be re-written to try to address OOC issues which are avoidable. Some OOC issues, like handling of the Council seat with a Path has zero or one member, should be. As far as I'm concerned, whether or not non-Councilors can contribute to the discussion is a wholly IC issue.Whether or not the Hierarch is a dictator or puppet of the Council or if the polity is a madhouse should be a reflection of the characters.