English

I see your point, Luth, but I also see that it's easier for you to take that position as it is for Chanchey, for example. As you pointed out, non-citizen can participate to the politics of Windermeer, where he is Taliar. They can't in Avendale, obviously, which in turn might keep players away who suddenly have no say anymore in politics.

Another example: The rules of becoming a noble in Matia were very strict, even more than outlayed at the start, and only one noble was accepted per guild (apart from the court/academy nobles, which could not apply but were appointed - only three at all in all the years on Leanon), loosing his title when stepping back from guild leadership. On Aniro the rules were taken rather nonchalantly, with the Chronicles listing up to ten (!) nobles in one guild. In a ballot, that one guild could have outvoted all Leanon nobles back then! When recently one of our nobles left Atys, it was told to us by Libi Freldo that her former high officer, the new guild leader, can not become a noble and take her seat at the assembly permanently until it is decided at court. When in turn I went to Avalae with a proposal, they just had another noble appointed (most likely not for the house mentioned above), and it didn't seem to be a rare thing at all.

Third example: Look at the discussion re. Feylin and Zhoi. With Feylin's ignorance of the exceptional political status Zhoi earned by hard work, and the shyness of Sartyrica regarding the English language, in due time Feylin will be sort of sole political ruler of the Witherings. That's comfy for her, obviously, but it will force other political roleplayers in a form of exile from what they love to do and do well. That is no little thing, Luth. It would be no little thing for me, as it's politics which keep me in the game by now, and if I loose that green to play on, there's nothing to keep me on the root. There is no point in raising your voice if nobody listens; and I guess that was one main reason the communities were given one village each, to make sure that they cannot only speak, but are heard.

Well, if anybody don't want to make a step to the others, we're going to mourn a lot.

And you're wrong, on Avendale. Non-citizen can participate, these are the Talalochi's system, the people who can argue that their guild have their guild hall in the Lakes can become Talalochi and participate to the politics with some limits.

But the main problem, and i understand it, is to be out of the main stream of the politics because you think language is what determine politics of one person. You're wrong but we can't see it because we don't have so much meeting together.

If you want to have some language-based Assemblies, ok, but in my feelings, it's more a disadvantage for the game and his becoming than an advantage.

After, you speak of the problem between Zhoi and Feylin... I will explain this a problem between two Zorais who want power in their country... this is a fight between bot of them. ANd in each fight, there is only two solutions : agreement or the loss of one of them.

And i am going to add one argument : it's easier to be the leader of a small community than to a bigger one with people very different of you. It's maybe the main problem... So, the different leaders could try to preserve their little leadership more than build a great community in which they can lose this leadership.

We do always finish on ego's stories ! Maybe... I am wrong, i hope.

I want to add some comments. I am playing not a very long time, mid of December it was 2 years, for me, and mid of January for Diwu (who did not play an active role until beginning of 2012, anyway).

All time from the beginning, I participated in the assemblies of the nations as far as they were public, mainly out of curiosity. Later I assumed my role as an independant scout and patroller in defense of the free peoples of the four nations (this was before the plan of a rangers' faction was disclosed by the devs).

Though I never assumed any office in any of the nations (which would have contradicted my neutrality), I always had a say in the assemblies and was heard (though not always approved). Our customs of integration of diaspora trykerhood in the Trykers' National Assembly at Fairhaven even gave me voting rights in that constitutional body now wiped.

Our assemblies were generally designed towards a great extent of openness, short before the fusion even the Matis were about to create an additional chamber to give the non noble vassals a say and a possibility to participate in roleplay.

I can say that in spite of the small and shrinking population of Leanon roleplay was the most vivid and best visited part of social life. Lamentably that cannot be said about roleplay in the new world.

I have observed roleplay in the other communities since it began after the fusion. There are still grave differences between the communities which I doubt can be harmonized and reconciled fast. To name one, the french community considers tagging and integrating PvP into roleplay an indispensible part of their roleplay life while this was rare and was frowned upon by many. I do not judge about better or worse, but flattening the differences will alienate either side. Other examples may be given.

Beneath that, roleplay wins much of its richness from language. I received a transcript of the most recent session in Thesos and had a lot of opportunities to smile upon roleplay interaction, partially puns I did understand only after careful rereading, an excellent and amusing row between the celiakos and the barman, and several more. If I compare that with national meetings, they are ways less vivid, ways slower, taking much more time.

I agree that the role of national and local assemblies should be carefully observed and ways to optimize them be developped. Dumping the local assemblies will quite safely lead to further decline of roleplay.


A last word about a problem generously overlooked: The relative weakness of RP in the english speaking part of the community is to a considerable extent, though not only, a problem of timezones. It may be further a problem of lack of event managers on the other side of the Atlantic (though this is speculation from my side).

It's a bit unfair to play on the egos, Luth. But if you insist: May I remind you that it was me who made Icus a national theme on the Matis assemblies, therefore bringing together the three villages doing just their own bit seperated from the others? May I also remind you that I put the water road on a national map, while you tried to make it out only with Avalae (as Icus did repeatedly)? And it was also me who came to the Avalae Assembly recently with the proposal of an expedition (which involves the ET, though, which did not reply to me yet). I could have just layed back and stayed quiet on all these occasions, or could have kept everything on the German language stage and take a comfortable seat on the Davae Assembly, which I declined. Probably this has to do with ego, of course. You don't do politics without ego. You do politics to move things, not to keep them static - unless you're only there for the money (in real life) or as a paid/conducted vote bringer. If the will to move things has to do with ego, I agree with you. But if you see this as a loss instead of a profit, I couldn't disagree with you more.

By the way, how's the vote? As said, I did not vote yet, but would like to know the counts.

Wrong. A majority of rolist were untagged during the assembly back on aniro (on untagged almost 100% of the time, actually), and french rolist tagging is pretty recent (after very, very, very long debates on the french forum about this).This is another problem ; we didn't have a lot of things to speak about during the meeting, and we needed the celiakos' approval. So we had to wait for his answer (and he had a crash in the middle of the meeting, which didn't helped). And if i don't personnally have problem with fast-typing, i can understand pretty well that people need time to write, so when i'm in charge of the assembly, i try to give time to people. Except when my toon don't want to let people answer, of course
I remeber a thread on this forum saying that the event manager couldn't handle USA/australia timezone for events/assembly (so there's probably none in this timezone)

Absolutely not my goal, irrelevant according to the Theocracy's Lore(rather tahna currently absent constitution), and absolutely not what will happening if I can choose (though i won't give up my role for that).
Although it may look like that on roleplaying view, this is an OOC discussion.
Agreed. I rather see local assemblies more rare, or maybe suspended to have time to see national things settled than totally disappearing.

I think (i may be wrong to make such assumptions) that right now, the Event Team has too much to do to prepare local Events and make local assemblies really animated. (i mean more than playing a NPC to participate), so they look useless right now. I don't think we can see this as definitive.

I didn't suggest this as your goal. I do state this as the most likely consequence - IG as well as OOC.


Well, probably. I can't remember, though, a single local assembly in Davae animated by more than the presence of Libi Freldo in the Speaker's chair.

Personally, I think that the idea to trim down the frequency of regional vs. national assemblies to some extent is not bad. It may depend on the situation of the nation in question whether this means 1:1 at once or not.

In the desert, I would consider any trimming down unacceptable before and unless the function of the missing Akenos has been restored through by-election and/or nomination of provisional Akenos for the missing ones. The voting rights of the cities must not be infringed, that is not only true for Dyron, but also for Hoi-Cho, Windermeer, and Davae (I cannot speak for the english speaking community, and find the total lack of their presence in this debate lamentable).

The french friends should please reflect that this initiative, nearly unanimously approved by their community as far as expressed in the french forum, may have risen new concern and suspicion rather than contributing to strengthening the ties. In Germany there is a proverb "let's go fishing, the angler said to the worm" ;).

You know, if you want to have more akenos/awakened/vassal/taliar, you just have to ask the conditions to the event mnager present ? They often aren't really hard to get, and the event manager won't probably refuse one people (because we aren't a lot, at the time), except if it is clearly troll/too much OOC.

How about we let each community choose its own pace? If French trykers want 3 local assemblies and it still seems too few, host 3. If English Fyros don't really have much to say, host 1-2 between national ones. I'm sure the event team would not mind.

Yes, they must be a function of the people's involvment, if the akenos stopped caring that's for a good reason, and if people aren't scrambling to take their place is for an equally good reason. Fix the people's desire to RP before you attempt to build politics on top of a shaky foundation.

Regardless it seems to be a little late I want to explain my very personal point of view to you.

On Leanon I've been the first ambassador of the Trykers and I did this job with great fun until the servers merged.

Now I will never have a chance to even play a small role in international politics because my English is poor so it’s easy to be misunderstood and that could be deadly in diplomacy. Also I can't react in discussions in time because until I understand the first argument the discussion stepped forward for five or six new statements – even with translation.

My only chance to be activ in a political way are the regional assemblies. So I'm looking forward to the new Tryker constituntion to install a local law for Windermeer where I can act as a citiy council or maybe even as something like a mayor. For national and international things I’ll have my Chanchey.

With an official mandate of my city I'm able to speak in another way to regional (German) assemblies than a mother, a jewelist or a member of The Free Soul. At the moment I have to follow the assemblies silently.

I have two projects for Windermeer in my mind and maybe there are some more ideas. At least one of them may breathe new life into the German assemblies and may be discussed in others.

So I need the regional assemblies for my personal roleplay.

But I’m only one player of I don’t know how much.

I vote other.

When I created NASA (ASA before the second swarm), one of the research topics that were launched by two old atysien fellows was:
"how can we make meetings more dynamic, shorter and less tedious among other with reports? "

When we got to get together after the second swarm with our new friends from other languages, we have taken as much as possible this research both for RP and OOC.
Very spontaneously - and in my humble opinion, with some success - , we were able to manage trilingual discussions with some very talented and very patient friends. With a few jugs of Tryker beer and a bit of Zoraï wisdom there was not only possible but also very funny.

The problem is not, according to me, the problem of translation. Everyone speaks in NASA meetings in his language and translators transcribe. I think the problem is the length of the meetings ... and we are trying to reproduce the default OOC "réunionites" (a French pejorative word made with "meeting-nitis") :/ There are too many points discussed as if we were afraid to miss one idea, while the majority of the points in the meeting does not interest everybody. How many people come only for "their" favorite topics and not the rest. It is not disinterest, but because the days have only 24 hours, one has to chose priorities.

At NASA, we study also how to improve the meeting itself. Sometimes we shamble OOC and RP (how often, how to manage priorities, events, game ...?). We do not have a miracle solution, but against all, those who are interested do not hesitate to participate and to enrich the NASA experience (I repeat that it is both OOC and RP) or just come and see how we are living our meetings. (Marauders are also welcome évidement ;))