2 PC Rule - No Need to Amend Charter

[Castano]

Admin. Because they have in the past been allowing unretirements under the radar and it become public. You are today playing with PCs that were unretiered after a new PC was roleld up and the player felt it was a mistake.

The issue is ALFA has outlasted its pillars, we are a much much smaller community now - back when they were written we had the member base to afford the 1 PC luxury. All the servers were populated. Whoever wrote the charter up doesn't even refer to them, which I think is a good thing, though I would like to see a bit more than player admin decision amend any of the rules in chapter 2 of the ALFA Rulebook. That's something perhaps Rumple can take up. Sorting out exactly how do we amend game rules. Also integrating the charter and pillars into one document would be a good idea, and moving a good chunk of the pillars into easier to amend rules also so we have more flexibility.

[Stormbring3r]

Then why not just vote them out since they are no longer valid.. Why have rulz for rulz? I work for a County Gov and we don't even have rulz for rulz.. We are a small community of friends here in ALFA and we should minimize our rulz to allow people to have fun.. after all thats is what were are about.. am I right?


I have seen people join and never play after reading the rulz..

Its like going to the Indy 500 where every driver has to obey the posted speed limit.. Where is the FUN?

I like ALFA and will continue to play and harass Stormseekr till he comes back

I also vow to RP my old shrivled heart out whenever I meet a new to me player and even the older players.. I make up stories as I RP and embelish the real ones to get adventures going.. I try to help where I can.. Wait.... I am not running for office here.. Lets fix the issue and start having MORE FUN


I suggest the LA get with the HDM's and get the rulz changed to suit the new ALFA..

[Swift]

I suggest the LA get with the HDM's and get the rulz changed to suit the new ALFA..

Does anyone else recall how many people spent what length of time coming up with them in the first place? It was numerous people and quite some time.

Some people are constantly complaining that too much time is spend on Game B rather than Game A, so going for a complete overhaul of the rules (as this suggestion is) is asking volunteers to spend even more time away from Game A to do Game B stuff.

Modify or remove individual rules as the situation requires. Strangely enough, people still manage to have a great deal of fun in ALFA despite (or in spite) of our rules. Do we have too many? Probably, but asking a bunch of people to carve them up to a point where a consensus is found is hardly a worthwhile way to ask members to spend their time.

Consensus is the main thing and as we can see, even with a singular idea, consensus is not a simple thing to reach. Getting it on a wholesale overhaul would be a long, drawn out process that would just be criticized by people for taking too long.

[Stormbring3r]

I suggest the LA get with the HDM's and get the rulz changed to suit the new ALFA..

Does anyone else recall how many people spent what length of time coming up with them in the first place? It was numerous people and quite some time.

Some people are constantly complaining that too much time is spend on Game B rather than Game A, so going for a complete overhaul of the rules (as this suggestion is) is asking volunteers to spend even more time away from Game A to do Game B stuff.

Modify or remove individual rules as the situation requires. Strangely enough, people still manage to have a great deal of fun in ALFA despite (or in spite) of our rules. Do we have too many? Probably, but asking a bunch of people to carve them up to a point where a consensus is found is hardly a worthwhile way to ask members to spend their time.

Consensus is the main thing and as we can see, even with a singular idea, consensus is not a simple thing to reach. Getting it on a wholesale overhaul would be a long, drawn out process that would just be criticized by people for taking too long.

I was not refering to changing all the rulz.. just the ones that need it.. Like the "if you start an new toon you can no longer play your old toon" Which means all those temp retires are illegal...

[Swift]

I was not refering to changing all the rulz.. just the ones that need it.. Like the "if you start an new toon you can no longer play your old toon" Which means all those temp retires are illegal...

Well, that is exactly what they are doing

[kid]

There is no need to change all the rules.

[Rotku]

Admin. Because they have in the past been allowing unretirements under the radar and it become public. You are today playing with PCs that were unretiered after a new PC was roleld up and the player felt it was a mistake.

If by "under the radar" you mean posting in a public announcement thread every time it was done, then sure, I guess they did.

You are right that the pillars are not part of the Charter - they have never been and I don't think anyone (especially not Veilan) claimed that they were. The pillars were drafted by a bunch of community members after the Charter was put in place (I believe lead by Mikayla), and approved by the Admin. The point of them was to act as a guiding mechanism, pointing us in a unified direction. They were never seen as hard and fast rules, and especially not seen as rules which govern the way that ALFA was structured (that's what the Charter is for), instead they were more the spirit of what ALFA is. (As a side note, notice that Level 1 Start was not mentioned?)

Of course ALFA has changed over time. I don't know if they were meant to be hard and fast pillars which could never change, or not. I honestly didn't pay that much attention to the conversations back then, as I disagreed with fixing some of those things in writing. The first one that came up for serious discussion was the Spanning the Entire Forgotten Realms one. There have been numerous times that the Admin have turned down a new server been built because it was outside of the core areas where the other servers were focused - to my knowledge, no one ever claimed that this contradicted the charter. When our numbers started to wilt in the end days of NWN1, the serious discussion about removing some servers, and changing the spanning pillar came about. As far as I can remember, no server has ever been cut by the Admin for reasons of player density or whatever, however I cannot remember there ever been any doubt that Admin /can/ do that, according to their charter powers.

The idea that the Pillars are a key part of the Charter has been a very recent thing to emerge. The reason for this probably lies at Veilan's feet. I had a discussion with Veilan about this when it first came up. When faced with a large proportion of members who wanted to change the 1 PC rule (which isn't mentioned in the Charter, however forms a Pillar), Veilan correctly felt that it was out of any one Admin's domain to decide to change such a fundamental core of our community. Searching for a way to fairly see if the community wanted the change, precedent shows three ways of making such decisions. (1) The Admin in charge decides (in this case the PA); (2) A majority or unanimous Admin vote; (3) a super majority of Admin and DMs/staff head. Option 1 was obviously out - as mentioned, it has long been agreed that such major changes to ALFA should not rest in one Admin's hands. Option 2 was what I used during my time as LA for a couple of major issues that arose - I always felt that such things should be agreed upon by the entire Admin body before getting carved in stone. This route never let anything pass the muster, as there are always Admin of opposing views (I believe we were usually split 3 in favour, 2 against changes). Futuremore, every time this path was taken, people complained "It's clear that the majority of players want it, why do the Admin keep voting it down?!" and kicking up a shit storm. Veilan chose the third route - it offered a compromise between the "Let the Admin Decide" and Just Do It!" by broadening the voting base. The big misunderstanding came when Vielan specifically said that it was a Charter change - the thread was even titled "Charter Revision - Pillar 5".

Going forward from here, my recommendation to the Admin would be that Veilan had the right idea - however the Charter failed him. Looking at the results from the vote, we see that 33% of eligible DM/staff voted in favour and 40% of Admin. However, the actual numbers for and against were a lot more in favour. While I don't have access to read the actual numbers, in a thread the following week Vendrin (the sitting PA of the time) claimed that only 2 Admin voted, both in favour, and that there was a clear 2/3 majority of those Staff/DM who bothered to vote. So the proposed change was shot down by apathy rather than by people actively voting against it.

Hence my suggestion to the Admin:

• Veilan had the right idea - big change like this should require a vote like a charter change. However, hold off the vote for a bit, people can survive another month without these changes - get the house in order first.
• Amend the Charter to require a 2/3 majority of VOTING DM/Staff/Admin, rather than a 2/3 Majority of SITTING DM/Staff and Admin. While you are there, do try and engrain the Pillars into the Charter, somehow, to prevent any future confusion.
• Then put it to a vote. Get that proper vote through, like it should be done to save any future complaints or what-not.

[kid]

lets not have the admin debat here. *Shrugs* its not like we can change anything.
When time comes if we do not like what our admins came up with we'll change the aminds *Shrugs*

[zilvai]

Let's be Anarchists and destroy all the rules, living in a rule lacking server! Maybe then people will stop complaining about each other powergrinding, getting twinked by certain friend DMs, having more then one PC, yada yada!