Every Maran can act as a leader replacement and induct ONE applicant they consider fitting for the cabal. Leaders could still induct normally and would still be meant for most of that kind of work, but this could be a nice backup to ease leader burden an bit and help applicants that have waited for disproportionally high amount of time for an interview.

Not only it has many OOC issues, it is also a burden. Many players leave CF becase it becomes too time consuming and a lot of work.
The game is supposed to be fun, not job. That's the only way to increase the playerbase. That means you need to discard any ideas that can "potentially" increase job-factor without even considering.
Better go Empire induction model. Hell, I like Battle but if I'm going to make another character it will probably be an imperial, just because I don't like induction hassle.

Not every role for MARAN is a good role for "MARAN LEADER".



>For one, the Captain/Marshall are no longer tasked with performing an in-depth analysis of every applicant.




Uh? That's been a duty of the leader of a cabal since cabals started!

Sure, various mortal leaders, and imms, have enforced various "recommendation" regimes (in my mind mostly because they are lazy), and those over time have been so popular as to become almost canon law.


But the burdens of leadership just shouldn't be forced on all characters who want to be in a cabal.

If you don't want to spend significant time with applicants, don't take the leader position. And that should remain an option in cabals...those who just want to "do the work" and not worry about renewing the blood...because that's the Leader's job.



Leaders get edge points. Imm loving. Most often new skills/weapons. titles. LOTS of extra con. Extra age. etc.

I've always viewed this as not only a reward for being good at playing the cabal...but also as benies to compensate for ACTUALLY DOING THE WORK OF LEADERSHIP!

Leadership isn't just about the bennies. Leadership is about LEADING. And in cf, I take that to mean "Making sure the cabal I lead is strong, by making sure all applicants are worthy/taught well".


My view has always been ......

you want the perks of leadership? then don't be lazy and pawn off your responsibilities onto those you lead.




In short, this to me just seems like a cop-out from people who want the powers and prestige of maran leadership, without having to do the work, so they pawn it off onto the rest of the cabal.



To make this change 'fair', I think you would have to also get rid of the two "leader" slots, and give the power to induct to all maran.

Maybe then have a "council" like the Jedi have. Heck, Jedi in the movies took apprentices without the will of the leadership. If each full jedi can choose their own apprentice, why is there a need for 1 or 2 'leaders'?


Of course, to give the power to induct to all full maran would just make it that much harder to become full maran. Meaning far more would be stuck as squires, having to deal with powerful enemies with "protection from evil" as their only cabal power for hundreds....upon hundreds....upon hundreds...upon hundreds...of hours.

Meaning more players would make the decision I made a long long time ago. To just stop trying.

That's a decision I made after 400+ hours of squireship over a number of squires (some of whom had really good roles, and not to toot my own horn,and really not trying to sound stuck up, but I know when I have a good role, I've won more than my fair share of role contests) Coupled with seeing handfuls of characters get full maran in 10-15 hours and then delete either before they got to hero or soon after getting to hero. Noone can tell me they were doing a better job at "maraning" than my characters were, eating death after death trying to defend against people with lots of cabal powers with my one.....while over and over seeing people get inducted long after me, get maran, then delete.



Now, to be fair, I've heard that this kind of thing, it being luck on being logged on when shokai or aarn was on being the only chance you ever had of becoming maran, has gotten way better recently, but it put such a bad taste in my mouth I just haven't really had much of a drive to put any effort into it since.


Back to the point. I see this change as REQUIRING it to be made harder to become full maran. because every maran would in essence be a mini-leader.....which really wouldn't be fair without giving them some sort of induct power/boost....which should make it harder to become maran. That will require more people to spend more time in a cabal where the goal is to FIGHT...and fight people who happen to have pimp pk cabal powers....with the equivalent of no powers...for longer.

That, I believe, would lead to a fast pc and player burnout rate.



I could go on with other reasons I don't really like the idea.( For instance, I think a change like this would make power-swings with logons and logoffs more drastic. It would also encourage more ooc permas) but I've rambled long enough so I won't go into my rationale for those arguments.

>Uh? That's been a duty of the leader of a cabal since cabals
>started!

Not Empire, for one.


>But the burdens of leadership just shouldn't be forced on all
>characters who want to be in a cabal.

"Conducting interviews" doesn't equal the sum total of "burdens of leadership". For instance, the leader should make overall policy decisions about the cabal. He should broker treaties with other cabals, or start wars. He should set policy regarding what behaviors are allowed and not allowed. He should adjudicate disputes between cabal members. My scheme doesn't offload any of those duties to non-leader cabal members.

>In short, this to me just seems like a cop-out from people who
>want the powers and prestige of maran leadership, without
>having to do the work, so they pawn it off onto the rest of
>the cabal.

On the other hand, if the non-leader Marans have no responsibilities whatsoever, then they're basically getting the benefits (powers) "for free", which is what you bemoan the leader potentially doing. Why should senior cabal members not also share some portion of the task of screening applicants? Like the mortal leaders, they have been raised to a position of authority in the cabal (albeit still subordinate to the Captain). Should that extra authority come without any additional responsibility attached?

>Noone can tell me they were doing a better job at "maraning"
>than my characters were, eating death after death trying to
>defend against people with lots of cabal powers with my
>one.....

Maybe the fact that you were dying over and over is inconsistent with your claim to have been doing an equally good job of "maraning". I'm not sure what criteria Baerinika uses, but if I were in her position, I might be reluctant to promote someone who consistently suicides by running into overwhelming odds.

>made harder to become full maran. because every maran would
>in essence be a mini-leader.....which really wouldn't be fair
>without giving them some sort of induct power/boost....

I disagree that this change would turn every maran into a mini-leader. Once a maran's slots were full, he would essentially have no responsibility to interview prospective squires until such time as one of his spots became open. So, they might actually have to spend less time interviewing people than they do under the current system. Though, with the proposed changes, they would probably want to make their interviews more in-depth.

This would be sooooooo cool from an RP perspective, in my opinion.

On the other hand, there would be a few OOC issues. The more active the maran, the more pressure on people he'll have to take as squires. This would put heavy loads on the most active maran. It would also make the lives of applicants hell when all the most active maran have all their squire slots occupied, and the applicant has to find that guy who logs in for half an hour in the middle of the night once a week.

You would also be limiting Fort numbers by how many maran are walking around, and this would mean that if you didn't immediately promote several squires after a few maran delete, the Fort will be closed to new applicants for a long while. Seems to me that as it is, there is no obligation for an imm to toss out promotions, they just do when they see cool stuff. Its a nice pat on the back, with some very real perks behind it. With this new system, the fort would practically be forced to promote squires every time a batch of maran delete or die off, regardless of how much these squires may or may have not done to earn it. I'm not sure I really love that idea.

Part of this system is that you'd have to be okay with the Fort being closed for potentially a week or so at a time. Theoretically it would also motivate Maran to be more selective when taking on Squires.

Remember that Squires delete too, so I would expect that occasionally some maran would have squire slots opening up for that reason as well.

I like the idea of this and it has been suggested and tossed around before, but I think the reality would be too hard to actually have/enforce. Truthfully, Fort leaders are pretty much free to have whatever induction process they want. I will try and nudge them a little to induct early where possible, but other than that I leave it completely up to them.

There will be no white flag above my door. - Dido

Stones taught me to fly
Love taught me to cry
So come on courage
Teach me to be shy
Cause it's not hard to fall - Damien Rice

What doesn't kill you makes a fighter, footsteps even lighter - Kelly Clarkso

Well, yeah. Something like the above would be a lot more feasible if there were code support for it. But...that's a bunch of effort.

One problem is what to do with squires when their maran ceases to exist, or is booted from the fort. I'm thinking they would either be attached to current Captain/Marshall (who would not typically have attached Squires), or they migrate over to some other Maran.